


Gut Instinct

by theprophetlemonade



Category: Jurassic World (2015), Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dinosaurs, Alternate Universe - Jurassic Park, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossover, Dinosaurs, Extended One Shot, Feelings, Fluff, Grad Student!Jean, Humor, Jurassic Park Universe, Jurassic World AU, M/M, Mentions of alcohol, Mentions of canon violence, Mild Violence and Injury, Minor Canon Alterations, Pining, Short Story, Third Person POV, Triceratops Handler!Marco, canon references, self discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 22:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 74,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4853420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprophetlemonade/pseuds/theprophetlemonade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean Kirschtein is afraid of a lot of things: flying, dinosaurs with way too many teeth, and that thing that his heart does every time the park ranger with the freckles and the lopsided smile says hello. </p><p>A Jurassic World AU for Lars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bite Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MonoclePony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonoclePony/gifts).



> Hello! This is not just a Jurassic World AU, it's a Jurassic Experience. It was meant to be a one shot. Now it is three chapters, and over 70,000 words. I never learn.
> 
> Knowing the Spanish is not crucial to the understanding, but a lot of the Spanish is Costa Rican slang or phrases. I also tried to write Marco's English as if speaking as a non-native; I tried to write his grammar as if translating more directly from Spanish.
> 
> Some key, Costa Rican phrases:  
> "Por dicha": thank goodness.  
> "Soque": hurry up!  
> "Que m'iche?": what's up?  
> "No me digas!": no way!  
> "Me caes bien": I like you (I fell good for you).
> 
> Everything else can be Google Translated if you want to know, but it really doesn't affect the story not knowing.
> 
> Please enjoy the read, and let me know what you think! Comments are always loved and appreciated, and my Tumblr inbox is always open.

Sunrise over the Pacific Ocean should be something to marvel at, especially on a cloudless day such as this. Even at twenty-five thousand feet in the air, the vast blueness of the sea stretches out indefinitely towards the spills of orange and pink on the horizon, and the halo of yellow sun that bursts through the tiny, shuttered window splays gold ribbons over Jean Kirschtein’s seat on the DHC-6 flight to Isla Nublar.

His fingers dig into the armrests of his seat – not squishy leather like on any major airline, but something akin to balsawood covered with a flimsy bit of fabric, which was perhaps stripped off the gaudy cushions of an old public bus from twenty years ago. It certainly doesn’t ease the feeling of hurtling through the sky at three hundred kilometres an hour in a literal tin can – and a _tin can_ that seems to be held together by wobbly screws and creaky ceilings and probably a roll or two of gaffer tape.

Jean whips his eyes away from the window, wondering if slamming the blind shut would attract much attention from those dozing around him, and he focuses on the seat in front. There’s no television screen to steal his thoughts – really, who’s anyone kidding, this aircraft makes _Ryanair_ look like luxury – so he has to steady his breathing in the view of his cheap, grey-plastic tray table which vibrates unnervingly with the shaking of the plane.

Breathe in, breathe out.  In the event of a crash, he’d probably die of fright before they hit the sea – _so that’s got to be reassuring, right_? (It isn’t.)

It’s not exactly encouraging to be able to look out the window and see actual propellers on the wings – you know, _those things keeping them in the air_ – that seem to splutter and choke the longer Jean stares. What Jean wouldn’t do to be on one of those _American Airlines_ double-decker, trans-continental jets – with actual engines, he might add. He might complain of their noise when they fly low over his Miami apartment at every hour of the day, but right at this moment, he could forgive them _any_ grievance.

He should’ve known better when he bordered the flying _death trap_ on the other side of Costa Rican customs. No sensible person willingly climbs onto something that creaks when he crab-walks down the aisle of seats, and reeks so strongly of gasoline. And Jean prides himself in being _sensible_ – he’s in his penultimate year of grad school at the University of Miami, studying for his doctorate in bioengineering, and living by himself for the first time since he moved from his home state to go to college. He’s supposed to be good at making adult decisions by this point in his life – he’s had twenty-five years of practice after all, and he’s mastered all the tricky things like watering his house plants, and running the dishwasher, and paying his bills ( _just_ ) – but agreeing to this trip may not be one of them.

He wiggles his fingers and presses his blunt and bitten fingernails into the armrest again, eviscerating half-crescent indentations through the fabric and into the flimsy wood. He grits his teeth – hard – and wonders if with the next heave of turbulence he might crack his jaw with how tightly he’s clenching it.

It doesn’t help matters when the woman sitting in the seat next to him – a local by the looks of it, with her dark skin and smattering of sun-drenched freckles, which Jean had noticed upon the third time she had tried to lean her head on his shoulder in the sleep she had fallen into straight out of San José – decides to call him out on it.

 _God dammit_ , Jean thinks, cowering as she clocks him, rolling her shoulders and stretching herself in the cramped conditions of her seat. _Why couldn’t you stay asleep? I was getting used to your fog horn snoring._

She leans over Jean with a wolfish leer, and he has to rip his drilling stare away from the seat in front of him – if only to hold her back from leaning any further into his personal space. God, he really _does_ hate flying.

“If you’re scared of this, you’re gonna have a _nightmare_ time when we get there,” she smirks. Jean regrets taking the window seat because it means he can’t make a hasty escape with the excuse that he needs to go use the _literal bucket_ of a toilet in the rear of the cabin. He’s never been good at talking to people – especially strangers – and the situation doesn’t exactly make things easier. He doesn’t like the feeling of being fenced in.

Jean’s panic clearly shows a broad daylight across his thin features. The woman’s mouth twitches up at the corners, and she looks even _more_ menacing.

“Y’know, statistically, these planes only crash once every five hundred thousand miles,” she sniggers. Jean pales, or possible goes green. He’s not entirely sure. “But, I mean, the exhibits only eat everyone on the island every _twenty five years_ , so it’s your call which ya’ think has the better odds.”

 _Exhibits_. Right. The reason he’s clinging to his seat in an airplane thousands of metres above the Pacific Ocean. The ever-so-reassuring stutter of the propellers almost had him forgetting.

One of the reasons Jean had picked the University of Miami was for the chance to do an out-of-state research project in his penultimate year. He’s never been one for whimsical travelling, but he’s always enjoyed a bit of equatorial sun, and the thought of spending a few weeks with some _real_ state of the art equipment (as opposed to the always-breaking mass spectrometer back in his lab in Florida) was the selling point for throwing sensibilities to the wind.

When _InGen_ had offered his laboratory a placement at their facilities off the cost of Costa Rica, the academic in Jean’s lab had forwarded the opportunity straight to his email, with a cheesy line about Jean being able to get the tropical weather he always wanted.

Jean hadn’t been entirely sure why the name _InGen_ had seemed familiar until he had clicked on the attached link, and it had brought him to the homepage of something that made him spit his jet fuel coffee out over his keyboard in laughter.

_Coming Soon: Jurassic World._

He had typed a manic email back to his professor to ask if they were being fucking serious – but all that Hanji had replied with was another link, this time to the _InGen_ recruitment subpage.

 _We Make Your Future_ , the titular caption had read. Jean’s giggles hadn’t subsided for a good hour, but when he had turned up at the lab the following morning, Hanji had been all over him, throwing transcripts and research proposals at him, and pressuring him to take up the opportunity in the tropics.

“ _It’s a joke, though! Dinosaurs don’t exist!_ ” Jean had said, admittedly slightly terrified of the crazed look in Hanji’s eyes. “ _Why should I take up with a company whose research is bogus or at least not gonna go anywhere? I’d be much better looking at—_ ”

“ _It’ll be an experience, Jean!_ ” Hanji had exclaimed brightly, slapping him on the shoulder. “ _Think of all the stories you’ll have to tell!_ ”

Jean has never been exactly sure how to say _no_ to Professor Hanji, nor to explain that his thesis project shouldn’t just be an excuse for a laugh; he had spent the entire day in the lab on the _InGen_ homepage scouring through page after page of information, and piles of photos of their so called _dinosaurs_.

He had remembered why it all seemed so familiar when he stumbled across archive news reports of John Hammond and Jurassic Park – and all the apparent disasters that befell _that_ economic calamity.

It was all bogus to him. ( _It still is_ , he should clarify, even if he is some hundred miles over the Pacific.) Jurassic Park? Dinosaurs? All these testimonials of supposed scientists who had been there the first time they tried to open up a glorified petting zoo of overgrown lizards?

Still though. When _InGen_ had replied to his follow up email with the information that his eight week work experience project would be paid, and paid very well, Jean’s tune had changed.

Thus the airplane. Thus the _exhibits_. Thus the sneering woman asking him if he’s more scared of a seemingly _inevitable_ crash into the ocean or of a fictional ridiculousness. Jean is not _stupid_.

“I’m not s- _scared_ of some glorified Komodo dragons,” he hisses at the woman, curling his fingers tighter around the armrest. The plane buffets over a bubble of turbulence, jostling them around in their squeaky seats, and Jean’s knuckles turn white momentarily.

The woman scoffs, her laughter deep and guttural as she sits back into her chair, attempting to cross one leg over the other – save her legs are too long for the less-than-ample leg room between her and the row in front, and she just crumples-up awkwardly.

“Honey, you’re as white as a fucking sheet,” she guffaws. “I hope you remembered to pack your nightlight. Where we’re going has got _real_ nightmare fuel.”

Jean would deadpan her, if his nerves allowed it – or if he felt up to pursing a conversation. (he really doesn’t.)

So she believes in dinosaurs. _Whatever_. She’ll be disappointed when they land and she realises all the photos on the Jurassic World website were just the product of a talented graphic designer, and the things they’re calling _stegosauruses_ are actually just iguanas photographed with a tilt-shift lens. He’s not about to be eaten by a herd of grumpy lizards. Jean just wants her to stop talking so that he can make peace with how he’s _realistically_ going to die.

Sadly God doesn’t seem to be on his side today, and wants his last moments to be as painful as possible.

“You’re on the grad programme too, right? You look about my age,” she probes nosily. “Lemme guess – you’re a lab kid? Never left the safety of your fume hood?”

Jean grits his teeth and bites out a response.

“Bioengineering. University of Miami. You?”

“Palaeontology. Originally archaeology major, but I switched when I graduated and realised dino bones are way cooler than bits of broken pottery, y’feel? I’m at Yale. Name’s Ymir.”

She holds out a hand which Jean instantly abhors, because it means he has to unstick his sweaty fingers from his chair. He shakes her hand with a limp gesture.

“Jean,” he offers caustically in return, before adding sceptically, “You don’t actually _believe them_ when they say they’ve got live dinosaurs, do you?”

Ymir quirks an eyebrow, as if _surprised_ that Jean would ask such a question that apparently has such an obvious answer – but when she opens her mouth to speak, it’s not her voice that comes out.

“Are you talking about the Park?!”

A face pops up over the backs of Ymir and Jean’s seats, causing Jean to startle and Ymir’s sardonic expression to sour. She narrows her eyes at the man who has butted into their conversation: unruly brown hair, tanned skin, and _glowing_ green eyes peeping over the headrests.

“Fuck off, Eren,” she quips scathingly, “Do you have a fucking _radar_ that goes off whenever someone says the word _dinosaur_?”

The man, Eren, pulls a face at Ymir, and Jean figures they must already know each other. He has little time to deliberate whether _everyone_ is going to be as annoying and in-his-face as these two, before Eren is sticking a hand into his face invasively.

“Eren Jaeger,” he says proudly – and _loudly_. “I’m behavioural palaeontology at Berkley. ‘Sup?”

“’S-sup,” Jean replies hesitantly. “Jean. Miami.” He looks to Ymir questioningly. “What’s behavioural palaeontology?”

“Means he wrestles crocodiles for a living,” she deadpans. Eren smacks her unabashedly on the back of her head.

“That was only one time!” he grouses, “It means I – y’know – study animal behaviour in the wild and apply it to dinos. So, like, I’ve done the Savannah a couple times, and the Amazon, uh, the Himalayas once when I was undergrad—”

“No-one cares, Eren,” Ymir gripes, “You’re wasting oxygen by boasting.” Internally, Jean agrees, but at least his mind has been temporarily averted from imminent death.

“Everyone _cares_ ,” Eren scathes, “Aren’t you guys _boned_ for this? Finally I don’t have to guess any more, and we can actually see whether the _apatosauruses_ move in herds, or if _stegosaurus_ shows parental instincts—”

“Y’know that … they’re not exactly _real_ ,” Jean interjects. “The dinosaurs. It’s just for publicity. To get people to spend their money and fly out to Costa Rica to see some lizards or whatever.”

Eren turns to stare at Jean, positively _scandalised_ , before whipping his head back to beg Ymir for some sort of support. Ymir folds her arms across her chest defensively, levelling Jean with an unamused glower.

“Uh, hello?” she says, “You not remember what happened with the original Jurassic Park? You live under a rock?”

“C’mon,” Jean scoffs, “You seriously believe that? It was all sensationalised by the media. The storm fucked with their technology and a crocodile got out and bit someone, and they called it a _t.rex_.” 

“What about Ian Malcolm’s book?” Eren pipes up over the back of the seats, “That’s proof. It’s all there, the entire story. And Dr. Grant’s testimonial, and Ellie Sattler did that TV interview on Oprah—”

“Fabrications.”

“What about the National Geographic issue with all Nick Van Owen’s photographs?” Ymir scowls, “Photographic evidence that they have bred dinosaurs. You not seen all the adverts on television as well? The posters on the subway? In the newspaper? _Anything_?”

“Photoshop.”

The frown lines between Ymir’s eyebrows deepen, and for a moment Jean’s worried that he’s gone from being a stranger to being her _worst enemy_ within the space of five minutes, with just how angry she looks.

“The _t.rex_ in fucking _San Diego_ twenty two years ago?” she demands, “You can’t say that was fake – it was all over the fucking news for _days_. They have footage!”

Jean shrugs nonchalantly.

“Look, I’m not saying animatronics, but— _animatronics_. Like the same stuff they have at Disney World. P-please, it was a publicity stunt!” He stutters under the combined glare of both Ymir and Eren and swallows thickly. “T-totally animatronic. All that they’re gonna have at this park are some lizards beefed up on steroids, with maybe some feathers glued onto them if we’re lucky. Don’t know why you two have such _dino boners_. They’ve been dead for _billions of years_.”

“Millions,” Eren corrects, “Sixty-five million, actually. But if you count birds as a subspecies, considering they’re descended and all, then—”

He’s not allowed to finish, because Ymir punches him hard on the arm. He yelps, but she doesn’t care, fixing Jean with a predatory stare.

“So why you on this plane then?” she questions, “If you think the whole park is a bunch of baloney.”

“I’m a bioengineer,” Jean retorts offhandedly. “They’re obviously genetically modifying something, and at the end of the day, I really don’t care if it’s an iguana or a _t.rex_ … it’s all experience for me. And the pay is good. I’d like to be able to pay off my student loans sooner rather than _never_.”

Ymir’s sour expression hangs on a moment too long, and Jean wonders if he’s about to be _thrown_ from the emergency exit. But then, her mouth softens and she throws her head back and laughs bawdily.

“Each to their own,” she sniggers, shaking her head. “I just can’t wait to see your face when we land.”

Eren slithers back over the headrest of Jean’s seat, disappearing to wherever it is that he came from, and Ymir sits back in her seat, a smug smile playing on her lips, but leaving Jean to much-appreciated silence. (Well, the _silence_ is operative, because he’s suddenly very aware of the groan and whir of the turbines again. Great.)

He concentrates again on mediating his breathing, whilst scanning the inside of the plane’s hold. There are nineteen passengers, and one stewardess, who sits on a little fold-down seat at the front, just in front of the cockpit, which is hidden from view by nothing more than a beaded curtain. Jean can’t see into the cockpit from this angle, hemmed into the window seat, but he’s actually kinda _glad_ of that, because he reckons being able to watch the pilots fly this hunk of metal would not ease his neurosis.

Looking around the inside of the plane again, he directs his attention to the individual passengers that he can see: they’re all American, as far as he can tell. Or at least _white_. Even the stewardess is blonde-haired and fake-tanned, with a shock of red lipstick and an undoubtable Texan accent that Jean had noticed during the safety demonstration before they took off. Just your regular brand of mayonnaise.

It’s strange, he thinks, because it’s a Costa Rican airline, and yet no-one on this plane looks remotely Costa Rican. Well, except for—

“I feel like the only Caribbean chick in the Caribbean right now,” Ymir whispers into Jean’s ear, causing him to jump, reining in a curse word.

Jean refrains from telling her that technically they’re on the wrong side of Costa Rica for it to be the Caribbean. Instead, he hisses, “I thought you said you were from Connecticut, not the Caribbean.”

“Tom-ate-o, tom-ah-to,” she shrugs, and then leans in closer again, “But you noticed that we haven’t seen a local since the other side of customs in San José? Being West Indian feels like I’m a God-damn _exhibit_ , let me tell you. Maybe they’ll stick _me_ in a cage when we get there.”

“’S ‘cus none of the locals are dumb enough to go to an island filled with dinosaurs,” Eren interjects, poking his nose through the gap between Jean and Ymir’s seats. “Or brave enough. Depends how they feel about these _souped-up lizards_ with a hankering for manflesh. Y’know they call this chain of islands _Las Cinco Muertes_?”

Ymir turns to Jean before he can get a word in, and adds, “That means the Five Deaths, white boy.”

Jean scowls, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the palaeontologist.

“I might be a biologist, but I’m not _stupid_ , thanks.”

 

* * *

 

Isla Nublar is only one hundred and ninety kilometres west of the coast of Costa Rica, but for Jean, it can’t be close enough. The feel of runway tarmac beneath his feet is something he could _definitely_ get used to, and he thanks the stars that he doesn’t have to be on another plane for eight weeks.

There’s no airport terminal to receive them – because, by the looks of things, it’s still being built on the other side of the runway – so baggage collection is really just the pilot throwing suitcases out of the hold, and people running to catch the ones that look like theirs. Jean feels a little out of place when he grabs his wheeled suitcase – shiny and brand-spanking new, secured with a state-of-the-art padlock – because Ymir and Eren both have travelling backpacks: Eren’s is adorned with stickers and mementos of all the places he’s visited, and Ymir’s looks like it’s been unearthed in an archaeological dig all too recently.

That’s not where the differences end, either, Jean notes, as he casts a glance up and down his travelling companions as they’re instructed to wait beside the plane for their supervisor to collect them. Eren is striped with distinctive sun-tan across his arms and legs, and the pair of them are both decked out in khaki shorts and scruffy t-shirts, with sunglasses tucked over the collars of their shirts, and tatty socks rolled down over the ankles of their work boots – a stark contrast to the pressed trousers and button-down Jean had opted to fly-in.

 _It’s fine_ , he reassures himself. He’s lab, and they’re field. He can’t exactly work in a laboratory dressed like _Indiana Jones_ , and they wouldn’t be able to get down and dirty in a hole in the ground wearing a white lab coat.

Still, something niggles in the back of his mind that he’s not _entirely_ prepared for what he’s gotten himself into. (Jean bites back a grumble, but there’s little he can do _now_.)

That aside, Eren is _definitely_ excited. Jean is certainly glad that it’s Ymir who has to deal with his unbridled energy and ability to talk the hind leg off a donkey, and not him; he takes the opportunity to lean against his suitcase and doze in the baking sun, which, coupled with the whipping sea breeze, feels glorious against his skin. Eren’s ramblings and Ymir’s ragged _sighing_ becomes just background noise to the sound of far-off waves slapping against the shore, and the way the whirring airplane turbines sort of remind Jean of the sigh of sea foam against hot sand.

The reality that he’s being paid for what is essentially a vacation on a tropical island is a _very nice reality_ indeed. Just a little bit of lab work here and there, and maybe some paper work to fill out over ginger shandies on the rocks – it sounds like _heaven_.

Jean is imagining the sweet burn of liquor rolling down his throat when Eren gives an excitable shout, and Jean’s eyes snap open. A muscly, white Mercedes is sauntering its way across the tarmac, all shiny-chrome hubcaps and black-out windows, and it eases into a handbrake stop just in front of Ymir and Eren, the latter of whom is practically dancing on the spot.

From the driver’s side, a young woman slips out, her stiletto heels probably the only reason she can reach the pedals of the car, because she is _tiny_ – and made to look even _tinier_ by the man who heaves himself effortlessly from the passenger door. He is tall and stately, wearing white linen trousers and a fitted, pale-yellow button-down, and a white panama hat on top of his perfectly-parted blond hair. The young woman scampers to his side immediately – her white pencil skirt, floaty blouse, and chiselled, blonde bob matching her compatriot – and like a light switch, they both turn on mega-watt smiles.

Jean reckons Ymir and Eren both feel the fallout, because they seem just as physically blown back by the glowing beams of these impeccably-dressed people. (And Jean feels _under-dressed_ now, and frets that the creases on his trousers are really obvious from having sat down so long.)

“Welcome to Jurassic World,” the man gleams, “I’m Erwin Smith, the head of human resources here at the Park. This is Krista, my assistant, who will be personally responsible for making sure the three of you settle in and find everything that you need.”

Handshakes are exchanged – although Jean questions whether Erwin’s handshake is really that, and not a _vice grip that could crush all the bones in his fingers_ – and Krista offers to put their luggage in the trunk of the car. Eren offers his assistance and begins to babble brightly to the young woman as he helps her lift his heavy holdall; and Ymir collapses sideways onto Jean.

“I think I’m in love,” she swoons. Jean flaps his hands as he tries to push her away, but she’s surprisingly heavy for someone so lanky. He crumples under her weight.

“Get off me,” Jean gripes, “Do I honestly have to deal with you for eight fucking weeks?”

Ymir doesn’t listen, sighing deeply as her dark eyes fix on the blonde assistant.

“Do you think she could step on me in those heels if I asked?”

“Oh my _God_.”

 

* * *

 

Jean volunteers the middle seat in the back of the car, happy to let his head fall back against the headrest and his eyes flicker shut as Ymir and Eren plaster their noses to the windows, cawing over buildings, and trees, and gift shops, and … no _actual_ dinosaurs. Jean feels secretly smug, folding his arms across his chest as he sinks into the plush seat.

“When d’ya say the Park’s opening?” Eren asks, pawing at the glass as the Mercedes whizzes along a freshly paved promenade. Where he was probably hoping to see _stegosauruses_ and _triceratops_ , herds of men in fluorescent orange vests mill in and out of the buildings, hauling bricks and mortar up into their jungle-gyms of scaffolding, slaving away in the humid sun, and it really is just about as interesting as watching paint dry.

“Six weeks from yesterday,” Erwin retorts over his shoulder. “As you can see, we’re still busy with the finishing touches. But this here is the main street: thirty-seven  shops, twelve restaurants, eight cafes; and we have a few bars, a couple gift shops, a small cinema—”

 _A small cinema_. Jean almost laughs. _Just in case people get fed up with the non-existent dinosaurs, they can go catch the latest Batman movie_.

“—the main visitor’s centre is that conical building up ahead, which is where all the tours will run from,” Erwin continues. “The Hammond Creation Laboratory is also situated in there, but that will be off limits to the public principally.”

Jean lets an eye flicker open at that, but scolds himself for reacting to the word _laboratory_ the same way Eren seems to react to the word _dinosaur_.

“There are a few exhibits on site here: the Gentle Giant Petting Zoo, the Bamboo Forest, the observatory for the _mosasaurus_ back the way we just came, of course, and the monorail to the aviary also operates from this central area,” Erwin continues to explain, accompanied by Ymir and Eren’s noises of intrigued acknowledgement. “Everything else is found in the secondary zones, with the tertiary zone at the north of the island strictly off-limits to the public, but home to where we house a lot of our breeding programmes. But I’m sure you’ll get the chance to get acquainted with everything in the coming weeks. It will be the one and only _off-peak season_ Jurassic World will ever have, I can assure you.”

Krista raises the point of the _mosasaurus_ feeding show being something they just cannot miss; and whilst Ymir is disgustingly attentive, Jean realises he has not the faintest idea what a _mosasaurus_ even is, and nor does he care. (Probably some sort of overgrown crocodile, he concludes.) He twists his head to gaze out the window, over Eren’s shoulder. Corporate chains whiz past in a blur of colour: Starbucks, Pandora, _was that a Burger King_? Jean wonders if they sell lizard burgers here. He’s starving.

 

* * *

 

Erwin leaves them at the control centre, sliding out of the car with a tip of his hat and a smile that is broad, yet not broad enough to reach his eyes. Jean names it the _corporate smile_ , and figures he’ll be seeing a lot of them in the weeks to come.

“Well, let’s go show you guys where you’ll be living, as I’m sure you’re wanting to freshen up after your flight,” Krista says over her shoulder as she expertly wheels the Mercedes around, the tires spitting up sand from the gravel track that has replaced the newly-finished tarmac. “Employee apartments weren’t available, so we’ll be putting you up in some of our five-star accommodation. Does that sound good?”

Corporate lackeys or not, Jean likes the sound of a five-star hotel room, and he’s willing to bow to their pearly-white smiles when Krista shows them to their suites – because suites they are, with a living room decked out in mahogany, a marble-lined kitchenette, and a very well-stocked mini fridge – and he is able to flop backwards onto his king-sized bed with a happy sigh.

He doesn’t unpack, instead investigating every inch of his home for the next eight weeks; the walls still leak with the overpowering smell of fresh paint, the cushions on the couch are still firm, and he’s never seen a carpet so clean. (But he is a grad student who lives by himself, so he isn’t all that surprised. He can’t remember the last time his vacuum cleaner back home got a good use; his carpet is more abandoned takeaway containers, than actual floor space.)

Krista returns about half an hour later, a smitten Ymir hanging over her shoulder, and a firecracker Eren bounding at her feet when she knocks politely on Jean’s door and pokes her head in to see Jean lounging on the four-seater couch, absent-mindedly flicking through more television channels then he has seen in his entire life.

“Shall we get going?” she sparkles, “We have an awful lot to see today.”

 

* * *

 

Jean has to admit, their animatronics _are_ good. Better than Disney World, for sure. Hell, this would be something Steven Spielberg would be proud of, and Jean would pay full price at the cinema to see these in a movie.

The first exhibit Krista shows them is the _pachychephalosaurus_ , or the Pachy Arena, or _whatever commercial mumbo-jumbo they’ve slapped over its scientific name_ – Jean doesn’t care so much, and he is alongside Eren rushing up to the fence and pressing his nose against the mesh of the enclosure.

“Holy _shit_ ,” he mutters to himself. He wishes he knew more about mechanical engineering, thinking about what a field day his engineering friend Armin would have if he could see the size of these animatronics. Four foot tall and running around on _hind legs_ without falling over. Even knocking heads with one another and suffering no damage. Jean is amazed, and his pupils eclipse when two of the pachy- _whatever_ -osaurs ram into one another, the sound that their skull roofs make upon one another so similar to bone.

“What d’ya think?” Ymir says, slinking up beside him and leaning languidly on the fence, her smirk self-assured. “Pretty sweet, right?”

“ _Right_?” Jean gawks, “I’ve never seen robotic technology like this before – it’s _amazing_! You always hear about those Japanese people-robots on TV, but never stuff like this!”

Ymir barely resists the urge to smack her palm against her forehead as Jean turns back to the enclosure, enraptured by how the robotic creature paws at the ground with its claws, and he is stupefied by the ossified tendons that seem to ripple beneath its well-painted skin.

 

* * *

 

Jean’s resolute denial begins to crack with each new paddock that Krista shows them around.

It starts as a worm of doubt that wriggles into his ears when he watches an animatronic _parasaurolophus_ rip a fern plant out of the soil by its root and seemingly swallow it whole; and then it quickly becomes Ymir’s sardonically _feline_ grin that stalks his every worried glance cast in at the _dilophosaurus_ paddock; and finally it manifests as the sweat that begins to form as a slick sheen on his forehead and the back of his neck as they stand in front of the _compsognathus_ pen, watching the chicken-sized creatures run flighty circles around one another, jumping up and down at the glass window, snapping their tiny teeth at the feet of the visitors they can’t chow down on.

Normally, Jean would say it’s all the long, complicated words – all these names of species he’s never heard of before – that are making him fret.

But normally, Jean wouldn’t expect to be standing in front of living and breathing manifestations of these extinct species, trying not to listen to Eren prattle on about what they like to eat for dinner, or Krista explain how she thinks their feeding rota works.

It’s not real. It can’t, scientifically, _sensibly_ , be real.

He feels very warm. Woozy too, with how his head spins every time he blinks his eyes, and his mouth has been sucked dry of saliva, leaving his throat feeling very, very raw. He tugs at the collar of his shirt, undoing another button and fanning the starchy fabric against his sticky skin – which he doubts is not much help, seeing he already feels _considerable_ sweat patches drenching in the small of his back and under his arms.

“Okay,” Krista chimes, scrolling through the tablet she has in her arms, “We’re almost finished here, so I’ll take you over to T.rex Kingdom for a look at that – as the keepers are just about to feed it – and then we’ll jump on the monorail and head out to Gallimimus Valley for a look at our safari zones.” 

She leads the way with Ymir snapping at her heels, but it’s the look that the palaeontologist shoots Jean over her shoulder that makes his stomach _turn_.

 

* * *

 

By the time they reach the T.rex Kingdom, a mountainous, fortified-concrete pen _right next to the main street with all the shops_ _where there are a considerable amount of ready-to-eat people_ , Jean is as white as a sheet. His knees are shaking, threatening to give out beneath his weight and leave him as an amorphous, shivering blob on the floor, and it’s quite possible that he has sweated out every electrolyte in his body thrice over.

Krista leads the three of them up to a viewing deck, and informs them uniformly of the metre-thick, reinforced acrylic glass between them and the paddock – which Eren couldn’t care less about, as he plasters himself against the glass like an over-excited dog. Krista swipes her ID in the information stand, and pages someone behind the scenes on the radio, letting them know that if they’re ready for the feeding show, they can go ahead. There’s a rumble of assent through the intercom, followed by the electronic wheeze of wires and pullies moving somewhere Jean cannot see.

Oh, he _wishes_ it could stay that way. He wishes he didn’t have to see, because he’s all but holding himself upright with sheer _power of will_ by this point, but when a steel platform with a tethered goat upon it is lowered from the ceiling, he blanches, and for a moment thinks he might faint.

_Oh God, it’s real._

Ymir, for all her misgivings that Jean has accounted for within the last few hours, is quick enough on her toes to glide to his side, nudging him in the shoulder to prevent him from blacking-out. She grins evilly as the undergrowth beyond the glass rustles and parts for the leathery snout of something with the _biggest fucking teeth_ Jean has ever seen, and would never like to see again.

The tyrannosaur snorts haughtily, its breath fogging up the glass because it’s _that close_ , and Eren roars with inebriated, disbelieving laughter.

 _Disbelief_ is right. Jean feels like he’s in a science fiction movie, and could possibly mistake this for one really bad dream, if it weren’t for the sweat-drenched fear that freezes him to the spot, leaving him open-mouthed and shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.

“It’s a robot,” he whispers to himself when the _t.rex_ opens its cavernous jaws and roars deafeningly, embrittling the hair on the back of his neck, making the unmoveable Ymir startle blindingly, and causing Krista to shriek.

“It’s a robot,” he says to himself when its beady, yellow-green eyes detect the movement of the goat on the platform, and tendrils of gruesome, translucent drool drip from between its stalactite teeth.

“It’s a fucking _robot_ ,” he prays when the dinosaur _rips_ the hind leg off the poor, entirely innocent and entirely _doomed_ farm animal, all flesh, and blood, and the tearing of bones, and then swallows the goat whole, jacquards of thick, oozing blood slathering it’s reptilian jaws. Jean wheezes deflatingly.

“It just ate a goat,” Ymir deadpans from beside him. “It’s not a robot.”

“ _ROBOT_.”

 

* * *

 

“I always find that whole spectacle just a touch too gruesome for me,” Krista admits, fanning herself with the back of her hand as they stand outside the entrance to the monorail, Jean’s legs having finally giving up on him and left him collapsed against the wall of the building, his head between his knees. “But Mr. Smith and Mr. Masrani _insist_ that the children will love it, so how can you argue. The more teeth the better, apparently.”

 _The more teeth, the worse_ , Jean admonishes inside his head, gladly accepting the iced water Eren thrusts into his hands when he comes jogging back over the promenade from the nearest café. Jean presses the bottle to his forehead first, soothing the bubbling heat that has built up behind his eyes.

“Still can’t believe you’ve got a fully mature _t.rex_ here,” Eren wheezes, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair. “And she’s the same one from the Hammond Park, right? Makes her, what— twenty five years old, at least? That’s amazing.” 

“Can we not talk about it, please,” Jean rasps weakly, unscrewing the cap of the bottle and throwing half the water down his throat, placating the acid corroding his stomach lining. His gut churns violently.

“Sorry, Jean,” Krista muses, gazing sympathetically down at him. “We’ve just got the herbivores from here on out. I’ll save the _velociraptors_ for only those who can stomach it. Fortunately, you won’t get much interaction with the exhibits when you’re working in the laboratory, so I wouldn’t fret.”

“Yeah, fortunately,” Ymir snorts, until Jean silences her with a bitter glare. She turns to whistle nonchalantly after that, rocking back and forth on her heels, and alternating mutterings of “ _I told you so_ ” and “ _tyrannosaurus gonna eat’cha_ ” under her breath when she thinks Krista isn’t listening.

Jean should’ve trusted his gut when it told him he wasn’t prepared for this.

 

* * *

 

Jean doesn’t quite trust his legs when he finally hauls himself to his feet, but even when Krista asks if he’d like to go back to the hotel to cool down, he figures his _pride_ can still suffer and Ymir wouldn’t let him hear the last of it if he were to chicken out. Eren is practically pawing at the ground, close to wearing holes in the concrete with his work boots in how eager he is to see the rest of the park – and that doesn’t stop when they board the monorail. Jean falls back into the stiff, plastic chair with a huff, and would feel more amazed at the ability of the Berkley grad student to bounce around the inside walls of the carriage like a bottle rocket, if he didn’t feel so primordially _exhausted_.

The voiceover on the monorail is twee and obnoxious but only half finished, and the intercom buzzes in and out of function, unable to keep up with the prehistoric world that rolls by beyond the window. (Jean barely notices, of course, because Ymir and Eren are vocal enough to fill in any gaps of the audio, babbling nonsense into his ears and spitting out strings of words that would win any game of _Scrabble_.)

The monorail is an elegant, white bullet through the treetops and it stirs Jean’s fear of heights – save the feeling is counteracted by the knowledge that they’re taller than even the spindliest of _apatosauruses_ , which is all he _really_ cares about.

The steppes of the island sweep out from the mountains as great, grassy plains, not a far cry from the scenes depicted on the late night wildlife documentaries Jean would often switch on in the background of a particularly arduous all-nighter over paperwork in his apartment; but this is an entirely different sort of savannah, with lions and gazelles replaced by long-legged reptilian chickens that flock in tidal herds across the parklands that stretch out beyond the glass.

Ymir calls the dinosaurs _gallimimus_ ; Eren chirps about how their movements aren’t stampedal at all, but more like a flock of birds; Krista informs them dutifully that the valley is a staggering thirty-one square kilometres; and Jean shivers in his seat, wriggling his toes to remind himself that his feet are still firmly on steel flooring.

 _Real dinosaurs. Real, God-damn dinosaurs. Professor Hanji would have a field day. I am_ not _having a field day_ , Jean thinks, rubbing has hands firmly down his face. _This is not real. This can’t be real._

The monorail begins to slow, and when Krista announces that they’ll be getting off at this stop for some real _up-close-and-personal_ experiences, Jean’s response is a decaying sort of whimper.

There’s a Jeep waiting for them outside the front of the monorail station; Jean woefully eyes the signs towards the _gyrosphere_ , and the _tree-top observatory_ , and the _return to the visitor’s centre_ , dragging his feet as he considers how much safer all those things seem to sound than the soft-top car that Eren is bounding towards.

A canvas roof won’t protect them from a hungry dinosaur, Jean laments, watching as Krista has a quick conversation with a man in ranger uniform, signing her signature on a few documents stapled to a clipboard, and then shooting him a flasher of a smile.

“You coming aboard, lab boy?” Ymir calls out, already leeching out of the passenger window of the safari Jeep. “Let’s go see some dinosaurs!”

_Yes, let’s. Let’s not._

 

* * *

 

Jean is acutely aware of the fact he’s the only one in the car wearing his seatbelt when they whizz through the enclosure gates: concrete and electrified wire fences, which look certainly _very_ secure, if he were on the _correct_ side of them. He sinks low in his seat, somehow hoping that if he lies low enough below the rolled-down window, he won’t be seen – but it’s a pointless exercise considering the way Eren is _hanging_ from the door, ineffably close to falling out of the fast-moving car.

“This is entirely an exclusive,” Krista says over her shoulder, “Park visitors won’t be able to get nearly this close to the exhibits.”

 _There’s a damn good reason for that_ , Jean wallows, a tremble ricocheting up his spine and giving him near-whiplash when the Jeep comes up upon the flank of a herd of swiftly moving dinosaurs, all with bizarre, green-brown crests protruding from their skulls.

“ _Parasaurolophus_!” Eren exclaims, his green eyes sparkling with unbridled enthusiasm as the Jeep gets too close to their outer-edges, and the dinosaurs collectively cry out – a sound haunting and beautiful for the two palaeontologists, but blood-chilling for Jean. Krista expertly wheels them away, stealing some twenty or thirty feet of distance and pressing her stiletto to the brake so that they don’t outrun the flock. “Defensive pack behaviour! Keeping all their young on the inside of the group – that’s so cool! _Amazing_!”

Eren spins back to stare at Jean, hands flailing wildly, clearly expecting a more zealous response from the bioengineer who is trying awfully hard to curl himself up into as small a ball as possible.

“Amazing,” Jean repeats weakly. “What … what are the weird _growths_ on their … on their heads?”

“It’s used for combat,” Eren grins, “Y’know, when they’re in season and the males are trying to court females, and the most dominant will win—”

“What textbook have you been reading?” Ymir interjects, turning around in her seat with a scoff. “They only have books from the fifties at Berkley, huh? The crests are for display and communication. Too fragile for fighting and shit. We had one of ‘em on a dig in my sophomore year, and someone put a brush straight through the bone because they were too careless.”

“Communication, how?” Eren frowns.

“Amplifies their cries,” Ymir replies smugly. “Allows ‘em to keep in contact over large distances. Take a listen.”

They both silence and turn back towards the fleeing herd; the shrill cries punctuate the air like sirens, echoing far across the luscious strokes of green countryside. Jean swallows hard, biting back the temptation to press his hands against his ears.

“Do they … do they eat _meat_?” he squeaks out. From the front seat, Ymir barks a laugh, but Krista is sympathetic enough to reply, catching Jean’s eye in the rear-view mirror.

“No, no. They’re all herbivores in this sector. They have little interest in us – though there were a few early incidents of exhibits getting too familiar with their keepers and injuring them when demanding food.” Jean pales considerably in the back seat. “Oh, sorry. That was probably the wrong thing to say. Don’t fret about it – they won’t try anything whilst we’re in the car.”

That’s easier said than done, Jean decides, when they come far too close to the bludgeoning feet and wrecking-ball tail of what Eren names an _apatosaurus_ , and Jean very nearly has a heart-attack. He has never seen anything nearly as big in his entire life, and he gawks at the long-necked dinosaur towering and swaying above them. (He manages to resist cardiac arrest by clinging onto the handle of the car door and repeating over and over in his head that his insurance company won’t pay out for injuries caused by being stepped on by a creature the same weight as thirteen elephants.)

He finds himself lucky that Krista was a race-car driver in another life, and handles the Jeep in her heels as expertly as a Formula 1 racer, dodging the gangly and swooping appendages of the dinosaur and whirring across the grass to relative safety.

They’re whizzing down the gully of a shallow valley, where the grass grows longer and the car complains about the stodgier earth beneath its wheels, when Jean sees something that at first looks like a very oddly placed boulder lying between the ferns.

It’s not a boulder. He realises this when his eyes pass to the other Jurassic World Jeep parked next to the lumpy and over-sized rock, and the fact that Eren shouts out something indistinguishable but excitable. Krista makes the mistake of slowing down just a fraction, and the behavioural palaeontologist is out of the car like a lightning bolt.

“Eren!” Krista and Jean both yell in unison as the former slams her heels down on the brakes.

“Fucking idiot,” Ymir growls, but upon her lips is a positively predacious _grin_ , and her hand flies to the latch on the door – and then she, too, is leaping out of the car and onto the boggy grass, catapulting herself into a run after their teammate.

The car throws both Krista and Jean forward with a winding jolt when it rams to a halt, squeezing a breathy wheeze from Jean’s lungs.

“Please!” he hears Krista yell frantically, “Please get back in the car – we haven’t filled out the appropriate insurance forms for this!”

Jean almost feels sorry for their guide – because she’s dealing with the two biggest dinosaurs aficionados on the planet (which Jean has come to realise in the past few hours of knowing the pair of grad students), and nothing she can say will get them running back to the car willingly.

The boulder is not a boulder, and is in fact a _triceratops_. That’s one of the dinosaurs Jean knows by name at least. He recognises the basin-like bowl of bone that extends from the creature’s skull like a flute, and the two, massive, prong-like horns that extend from its forehead. (He did his time with _Walking With Dinosaurs_ when that was put on Netflix, okay.)

He’s relieved – a little – to see that the reason he mistook it for a rock at first is because it’s lying on its side, its great, bulbous stomach heaving up and down with each breath. He’s _not_ relieved when Krista stumbles from the driver’s door, wobbling as she tries to take a step and her heels sink into the mud, still shouting at Ymir and Eren – and he definitely doesn’t want to be left alone in the backseat when the _apatosaurus_ decides to come back and _step on him_.

“W-wait up!” he squawks, ripping himself out of his seatbelt and throwing himself out of the Jeep’s door. The mud squelches beneath his feet, slopping up on the clean leather of his business shoes. He recoils, but Krista doesn’t stop staggering away from him – so he has no choice but to dart across the marshy earth to catch up with her, all the while _screaming_ in his head that this is a _terrible_ idea and about how much he misses the beautiful, built-up high-rises of concrete Miami.

Eren, on the other hand, could not be more at home if he tried. Jean is quite surprised the palaeontologist doesn’t start pulling out chunks of his hair with how rapidly he’s carding his hands through his roots in disbelief and amazement.

“Holy shit, _holy shit_ ,” Eren repeats frantically as Jean and Krista manage to catch up. Jean is glad he’s not the only one feeling the sting of terror on the back of his neck, because there’s a distinctive wobble in Krista’s voice when she scolds her runaways.

“Eren, _please_ ,” she stresses, as Jean hangs back, eager to put as much distance as possible between himself and the labourly-breathing _triceratops_. He can’t even see Ymir. Maybe she’s already been eaten and digested, herbivore or not. Maybe she’s already dinosaur faeces. It’s probably the way she would’ve wanted to go. “We have to get back in the car and finish the _tour_.”

“It is not a problem,” comes a voice – thick and richly-accented – accompanied by a face Jean doesn’t recognise popping up from the other side of the belly of the _triceratops_. “It’s no problem for me. I have just, uh – ¿cómo se dice? – _sedated_ her, so she will not wake up for twenty minutes. We’re okay to have visitors here.”

Krista clearly knows the man who steps around the trunk-like feet of the unconscious dinosaur: tall and dark-skinned, with a remarkable collection of sun-comprehending freckles pooling on his bare skin. He’s dressed head to toe in park ranger uniform – khaki shorts and matching shirt sprinkled with flaky, earth-coloured dust, and clunky work boots caked in hard-drying mud – and sports a pair of sunglasses amidst the cowlicks of his dark hair. He skirts the legs of the _triceratops_ with a broad, easy smile that seems welcoming and unobtrusive.

He is very handsome. He is also sporting a pair of latex gloves up to his elbows, absolutely _smothered_ in dinosaur faeces. Jean is not sure for which reason he pales.

“I’m on a _schedule_ , Marco,” Krista complains, fanning herself with her hands again as she’s clearly getting flustered, “We’re meant to be at the aviary by two o’clock, and I haven’t filled out the appropriate paper work for this, and do you honestly think I’m suitably dressed for this sort of excursion? And why on earth is this exhibit not in its proper enclosure—”

“Eren, have you _seen_ this?!” Ymir pipes up loudly, overruling whatever else Krista has to be frantic for. She springs up from behind the _triceratops_ – thankfully not covered in digestive juices, Jean notes – and waves wildly for Eren to come and see whatever _wonderful_ thing she’s discovered. “I knew it – I knew it! I _knew_ the muscle distribution in their hind legs was like this! My professor can fucking _suck it_.”

The park ranger – Marco – laughs brightly, the sound deep and melodic, as Eren sprints to Ymir’s side and the two of them have some excitable screeching match which involves a lot of hands thrown in the air and happy, astounded noises. Krista is less than thrilled, and she tries to conceal her nervousness and flighty glances as she folds her arms across her chest, displeased. She might try to appear intimidating and authoritative, but the ranger has at least a foot of height on her, which spoils her demeanour.

“It’s _okay_ ,” Marco chuckles, picking at his dung-covered gloves. “A tree fell over in the night and made a hole in the fence. She must have squeezed her way through there – she is really good at, uh, _sneaking_. But we’ve got it under control.”

Jean doesn’t like the sound of that. _An escaping dinosaur_.  Those are two words that should not be said in sentence together.

“She was due a health check anyway,” the ranger continues brazenly, “I thought I could – _how do you say_ – hit two birds with one stone? I will not be long here before I move her back to her home.”

Krista makes a disapproving noise of assent, but then sighs. She shakes her head, unhappy but resigned. This is clearly not the job she signed up for, but there’s little she can do.

“I’ll go and call the aviary and tell them that we’ll be late,” she laments, “They’ll have to delay our tour. I’ll be in the car if you need me.”

Marco offers her a parting smile which is both broad and brilliant – and Jean would notice it reaches his dark eyes and make ripples in them, if he weren’t so focussed on being statue-still in the presence of the _triceratops_. He sucks in a feeble puff of air as Krista hurries past him, but his feet have sunk into the mud enough to root him to the spot, staring mutely at the flickering, leathery eyelids of the dinosaur.

“Estás okay? Are you okay?” Marco asks him, the words being bent around his dazzling smile. Jean feels even _less_ able to be coherent. “There is no need to be afraid. She cannot hurt you when she is like this.”

He could say that again. Only five hours ago, Jean didn’t even _believe_ in dinosaurs. It’s a bit of an acclimatisation. Just a bit.

Jean folds his arms around himself and shifts his weight from foot to foot, glancing between the dinosaur, the man, and the ground. He’s not entirely sure what the main cause of his ice-cold blood is, but he does learn in that instant that his reaction to dinosaurs being not as extinct as first anticipated is much the same as his reaction to highly attractive park rangers. Both seem to involve forgetting how to talk.

Marco approaches him gingerly, his strides soft and cautious as if creeping up on a flighty animal. His smile doesn’t falter, but Jean’s heart sure does. It’s the sort of smile that could persuade mountains to move. (Both Jean and the bracken slopes of Isla Nublar stand little chance against it.)

“I’m Marco,” he smiles hospitably. “The keeper for the _triceratops_ – that is, uh, the ones with the horns, if you don’t speak the dinosaur.” He chuckles at his own joke, and Jean grits his teeth, focussing back on the snout of the sleeping _triceratops_ , his eyes roaming over the stout horn upon its nose. It looks sharp.

“I would shake your hand, but, _uhm_ —” Marco continues, a little bashfully as he raises his arms and looks them up and down. He presents his dirty palms to Jean playfully. “Dinosaur poo, you know?”

Jean lets out a breath he was perfectly aware that he was holding, and it fractures the cold fear on his face into a brittle sort of smile. He scoffs lightly – and a little _disgusted_ – as Marco shrugs his shoulders and raises his gloved hands precociously. Marco’s lips quirk upwards at the sight of Jean’s small smile, and Jean is verily amazed that the man can beam any bigger. (But he’s not exactly _complaining_.)

Marco interprets Jean’s shyness as nerves, and takes pity on him.

“Are you nervous?” he prompts. Jean, unable to access articulate use of his vocal chords, just nods. “Ah. Por supuesto. You are not used to field work?”

“Uh, no,” Jean croaks shyly, “I, uh— I work in a lab normally. Y’know, science stuff, rather than … _this_ … stuff.”

Marco accepts Jean’s words as permission to take another step closer. The man is probably three or four inches taller than Jean, if he were without his clunky walking boots. With them on, he’s got almost half a head on the bioengineer. Jean notices that Marco’s dark freckles are most concentrated in the apples of his cheeks, which appear red-rosy in the harsh midday sun.

“Química? Chemistry?”

“Uh, no. Bioengineering, actually. It’s like, uhm—”          

“Like what they do in the lab here,” Marco supplies sunnily, pressing his tongue between his teeth as he smiles. “Makes sense, no? Es impresionate.” 

In its sleep, the sedated _triceratops_ snorts, the sound simultaneously guttural and nasally, a loud rumble rolling in the animal’s throat. Jean startles, a hiccup escaping his lips embarrassingly.

“W-when did you say it would wake up?” Jean chokes.

“Not yet,” Marco muses, “I used an etorphine dart, so maybe … twenty minutes more? You can touch her if you like. She is sleeping – won’t bite.”

“I think I’m okay not … doing that.”

Marco chuckles lightly, rubbing his gloved hands together as he strides up to the triceratops; he crouches down in front of its beaked mouth, the muscles in his tanned, sculpted calves flexing as he stretches. He tilts his head, peeking into the dinosaur’s mouth to take a look at its lolling, pink tongue, but doesn’t touch, gesturing for Jean to join him with an encourage flick of his wrist.

Feeling vulnerable standing alone in the middle of the dinosaur-infested field, Jean rushes to join him without hesitation. ( _He’s not stupid_ , he repeats to himself as a mantra.)

Jean feels the warm, muggy breath of the dinosaur upon his skin before he even squats down next to Marco – but when he does, he gets a lungful of the humid, potent breath, and _hacks_.

 _Can you feed breath mints to dinosaurs?_ he wheezes internally. _‘Cus it could sure use one._

Marco is unfazed, shuffling around in the boggy dirt to prevent himself from toppling over. Jean is conscious of the drying dung slathered all over the keeper’s arms and the proximity of his own, white shirt, but Marco is considerate enough to maintain a foot of space between them.

“You can touch her horn. Or on her nose. She won’t feel it, so don’t worry. Just keep your fingers away from her beak, just in case she shuts her mouth on your hand. Would be a bad way to start your trip, no?”

Jean extends his hand tentatively, but his fingers shake and tremble – he withdraws his fist to his chest regressively, shaking his head. He looks to Marco for guidance, and is met by patience.

“It won’t, like, jump or anything?” Jean questions nervously.

“No. Just try.”

Jean inhales deeply, the air skittering in his throat and in his lungs seismically. He reaches out again, extending his shoulder and his arm, and ghosts his palm over the leathery, reptilian skin of the _triceratops_ ’ nose. He glances at Marco, whose lopsided smile doesn’t fissure or fault.

The skin is cool and rough beneath Jean’s fingers, but pulsing with something he can’t quite describe. Maybe it’s blood, maybe it’s life, maybe it’s just his own nerves being poured into the unsuspecting dinosaur through the touch.

These definitely aren’t the steroid-fuelled _lizards_ that he was expecting. This is a living, breathing, unique _creature_.

The _triceratops_ rumbles again, a gravelly thunder booming in its throat – Jean rips his hand away as if stung or shocked by a spark of electricity.

“It just made a noise!” he squawks loudly, clutching his hand to his chest, eyes wide and frantic.

“That’s because it’s _alive_ , dumbass!” comes Ymir’s holler from over the bolstering shoulder of the dinosaur. “Next you’ll be screaming because it’s _breathing_.”

Jean can’t help but pout, hunching his shoulders and jutting out his lower lip. He surprised – and gladdened – however, that Marco doesn’t laugh, merely rolling his eyes at Ymir’s brash comment.

“Palaeontologists,” he jibes gently, his voice low and wading through the quietly _intense_ thickness of his accent. His dark, molasses-brown eyes are warm and kind, catching the sunlight with a web of hazel-gold flecks. “They are always the same. Fossils don’t have any feelings, but they forget that some people do.”

Jean feels his lips curl up into a natural smile that he cannot help – nor does he really want to _help_. He sees the change in his expression reflected in Marco’s eyes and the way happy creases form at his apexes as shallow crow’s feet. Jean huffs gently, biting down on his lower lip, and lets his eyes skip to the ground again shyly.  (But he knows what he’d rather be looking at. And it’s not the dinosaur.)

For what it’s worth, he feels his heartbeat return to its regular rhythm for the first time in a while. He’s relieved that it can still function that way, but doubts that it will maintain it, considering the way Marco tilts his head expectantly.

Jean opens his mouth to say something – what, exactly, he doesn’t know; but if he knows _himself_ , it’s bound to be something embarrassing or humiliating, as per the norm whenever he’s tried to talk to attractive strangers in the past – but is interrupted by a shout from the direction of the Jeep. Krista leans out of the driver’s window, her cell phone pressed to his ear and her neatly brushed hair beginning to frizz in the humidity, and calls out.

“We should be going,” she hollers, expertly straddling the line between effortlessly polite, and strictly demanding. There’s nothing in her tone that suggests she’s giving them a choice in the matter. “The aviary _is_ expecting us.”

Eren is uneager to leave, whining and dragging his heels as Ymir manhandles him away from the _triceratops_ , his hands outstretched and his fingers wiggling as he begs for just one more touch. Just one more look at her toes. Just one more peek as the wear of her teeth. Jean muses that Krista is _lucky_ that Ymir is a lot stronger than her gangly frame suggests, otherwise Eren would remain clinging to the underside of the dinosaur for the rest of the afternoon – if not the foreseeable future.

“C’mon, dino boy,” she growls, hauling Eren onto his feet when he attempts to go limp in her arms to avoid being kidnapped. “You heard what the pretty lady said. Get those feet moving, _stat_.”

Eren grumbles, folding his arms impudently over his chest and outright _sulking_ – until Ymir slams a knee up his backside and he barks, springing forward with a cry and his hands pressed protectively over his ass.

Marco chuckles, and it’s all dimples and dazzling white teeth pressed into lower lips that Jean’s swept up in – until Ymir grabs him by the back of his shirt and yanks the rug out from beneath his stumbling feet. Jean yelps in surprise too, Ymir’s fingers sticky against the back of his neck, and he knows his face flushes Robin red and warm when Marco tries to mediate the way his shoulders shake as he wills himself not too laugh at Jean _too_ much.

“You too, white boy,” Ymir yaps, kicking Jean on the backs of his ankles with her muddy boots to get him moving. Jean lifts his feet to avoid her onslaught, but all that he succeeds in achieving is a smear of cakey mud up the back of one pant leg. “You’re not gonna show me up in front of Krista. Beat it.”

Jean is steered away from the groaning _triceratops_ – and from Marco – in a fumble of feet he’s not looking where to place, and words he’s very quickly trying to spit out. He’s never been good at multitasking, and doesn’t even manage a frantic _goodbye_ before he’s shoved mercilessly towards Krista’s Jeep.

Ymir boots him into the backseat alongside a pouting Eren, whose face is screwed up into an ugly pucker as he sinks low on the bench, feet planted obstinately against the floor. Krista, at least, seems to be glad that she’s managed to pry them away, and the relief that washes over her face as she revs the engine is palpable.

Jean turns _immediately_ to his open window, eyes flying to the park ranger as he stands and offers the car a wave of his muddied hand and a faint shout of a Spanish farewell. The brilliance of Marco’s smile cuts through the humid air like a knife through butter, and Jean feels himself deflating with a pathetic squeak of air in the back seat.

Marco unpeels his gloves, the snap of latex against his forearms audible, and bundles them up into a knot; as Krista presses her toes to the accelerator, he grants them another wave with a clean hand. Jean almost raises a few fingers in reply, but before he can consider what a _lame_ idea _that_ would be, Marco has turned back to the _triceratops_ , sweeping his palm across the sedated creature’s brow and murmuring undoubtedly sweet reassurances that it can neither hear nor understand.

As Krista accelerates towards the protruding metal of the paddock gates, Jean realises that he didn’t get to give the Marco his own name. But he also wonders if eight weeks will really be _so_ bad.

 

* * *

 

The tour of the rest of the park is far less of a traumatic experience for Jean. Sure, he does practically _leap_ into Ymir’s arms when a _pterodactyl_ swoops far too low for his liking when they’re inside the aviary – even when Ymir reminds him brashly that there’s a cage fence between them and it – and he swallows thickly, feeling the cower of fear prickling every follicle in his skin when they pass the _velociraptor_ paddock and the piercing cries that echo shrilly through the air make him shiver. They don’t stop there, much to Eren’s disappointment and Jean’s relief, because Krista explains that the presence of any strangers will distract the pack from their training exercises.

She says it so nonchalantly that Jean almost doesn’t pick up on what she said. Ymir does, however, and it’s the curiosity and perhaps scepticism in her voice that lures the bioengineer into listening, and not daydreaming about the smile of the _triceratops_ ranger. (Jean’s always been weak to handsome men with kind smiles. He can’t help it. It’s better than thinking about what overgrown chicken lizards might be just one concrete wall away from ripping his limbs off.)

“Training exercise?” Ymir frowns, “What’s that about?”

“I don’t really know much about it,” Krista admits candidly, “A lot of it is kept under wraps, but we did just bring in a fellow from the Navy who’s working as the handler-in-chief here. Oh, what was his name? Owen— Owen _something_. I remember his paperwork went across my desk a few weeks back. Anyway, since then, it seems like a lot of ex-Navy people have been turning up on our employee list. All very interested in the training possibilities of those exhibits. Raptors supposedly have a very large brain capacity – or so I’m told. It’s not really my job to know, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, that’s correct,” Ymir mutters coolly, “Raptors are real smart.”

She twists around in her seat to stare out the passenger window as they roll past the enclosure, her eyes fixed on the concrete colosseum and her eyebrows contorted into a frown. Eren is measurably quiet too, and Jean can’t help but think that the raptors _are probably not being trained to play fetch_.

He has little time to dwell on it, however, when Krista announces that the last stop on their tour is the Hammond Creation Laboratory – Jean perks up, sitting a little straighter in his seat, whilst Ymir and Eren try to muffle their grumbles and the rolls of their eyes.

 

* * *

 

The minute his feet meet the cold, linoleum floor and his ears recognise the whir of a revolving rotary evaporator, Jean is in his element.

The lab is state-of-the-art, all white walls and glass doors, and _holy shit_ , is that the new Bruker MALDI-TOF system on the bench over there? (God, he’s read about mass spectral imaging in the _American_ _Journal of Chromatography_ that sometimes passes over Professor Hanji’s desk in the pile of literature that they never read, but Jean’s never put much hope in being able to use one back home in Florida, especially with the lab’s dwindling funds. But here— here they have _everything_.)

“Keep it in your pants, please,” Ymir remarks beside him, nudging him in his shoulder roughly. “Please don’t get a boner over a computer. That’s gonna be embarrassing.”

Jean tries to argue the case, parading all the details he’s read about the use of the spectrometer for determining special distribution of analytes and visualising their molecular masses – and insisting how _cutting edge_ this stuff is, and that Ymir isn’t _appreciating_ it enough – but when he realises how hers and Eren’s eyes literally glaze over every time their tour guide shows them a new centrifuge they’re meant to be impressed by, he figures it’s a lost cause.

 _Well, it doesn’t matter_ , he reasons with himself. _Professor Hanji is going to have an aneurysm when he tells them about this place. At least they’ll be excited._

The tour takes them through four zones of the laboratory, which their tour guide explains dutifully: extraction, sequencing, assembly, and hatchery. Jean nods along attentively to everything the guide says, trying to ignore the fact Ymir and Eren are dragging their heels, and Krista has fallen back, distracted by something apparently more interesting on her tablet, which she thumbs through lazily.

“And this is the hatchery,” the guide says finally, bringing the group to a stop in front of a room full of incubators. “The dinosaur DNA is inserted into the eggs to make them mature faster, and then those eggs are watched over and kept in conditions to stimulate the mother’s nest until they hatch. Naturally, any eggs that are produced in the paddocks due to genetic anomalies are hatched here too, but in most cases, all the dinosaurs hatched at the park are created artificially, as you’ve already seen—”

“The dinosaurs are born here?” Eren interrupts, some semblance of life returning to his green eyes when he hears _dinosaurs_ and _hatching_ in the same sentence. “Can we see any?”

The guide seems a little unnerved by Eren’s abrupt enthusiasm, but they are shown the way to an incubation bath presided over by a young woman in a lab coat, her goggles pushed up into her cropped, raven-black hair. The name-badge pinned to her breast-pocket reads: _Mikasa_.

“Shit, _stegosaurus_ eggs?” Eren hushes, awe-struck. He glances up at the technician with an ecstatic glimmer in his eyes. “Am I right?”

She doesn’t seem as thrown by Eren’s excitability – and the fact he has yet to master an _inside voice_ – as Jean might expect. Her lips form a small, reserved smile, and she nods, scooping up one of the eggs from beneath the spot light in her gloved hands.

“We’re expecting them to hatch very soon,” she says, her voice silky and smooth, and this catching Jean’s attention. “Would you like to hold one?”

Eren nods vigorously, accepting the purple-nylon gloves shoved into his hands by Ymir with fumbling fingers. He makes a mess of pulling them down his forearms, but probably more embarrassing – to Jean at least – is the cooing noise the palaeontologist makes when Mikasa rests the egg in his palms, ushering him to be careful. Jean peers carefully over the rim of the incubator, taking care not to lean too close to the infrared light that gently heats the congregation of eggs. The shells appear to have goose bumps, the texture raised in tiny prickles that mimics skin to Jean’s eyes; they’re not like any chicken eggs he’s ever seen, more oval-like and oblong – rather than the standard, tear-drop shape of which Jean might grab a carton in the supermarket back home.

“I can feel it moving!” Eren exclaims, gloved thumbs tracing carefully over the egg shell in his palms. “Holy shit, _holy shit_ – this is so cool!”

It’s not so cool when one of the other eggs on the table starts to crack, its shell splintering as a tiny eye peeks through the hole; Jean startles, leaping back from the table, Eren almost drops the egg he’s holding, and Ymir’s laugh is _bellowing_.

What hatches is definitely no chicken.

 

* * *

 

The work placement begins the next day.

Jean had spent the evening before with Ymir and Eren, who had argued over what food they wanted to eat for a good hour and a half, but he had fortunately been able to excuse himself from their company after the second round of drinks at the bar they had picked out, insisting that he still had to unpack. (And his colleagues had been tipping over into the realm of _drunken dinosaur gibberish_ by that point of the evening, so he didn’t face much criticism for slipping away into the quiet sanctuary of his hotel room.)

Jean doesn’t get to see the lab for the first few hours of the day, cooped up by Krista and an insurmountable pile of paperwork he has to fill out. He tries reading the fine print on a few documents he’s scrawling his signature across, but when his eyes scan things about insurance policies upon loss of limbs due to _incidents with exhibits_ , he decides maybe it’s better for his blood pressure if he doesn’t pay too much attention.

He meets his supervisor after that: a geneticist called Levi – although he immediately insists on being referred to as Mr. Ackermann, a far cry from the camaraderie Jean knows with Hanji back in Florida. The man is short, but the dark circles beneath his eyes and the permanent scowl in his thin eyebrows do not let his height detract from the ability he instantly has to make Jean _fear for his life_ should he step out of line and do something wrong.

The first week doesn’t exactly go very smoothly.

Levi likes to crack the whip, and _boy_ , does he smack it down hard. Jean’s not entirely sure how he is expected to know where the gas chromatographer is, or how to turn on the extractor fan in his fume hood, or that someone was saving that milk in the staff fridge for their mid-morning cup of coffee, all on his very first day, but Levi spares no sympathies. (After all, it was _his_ milk, and Jean quickly learns that without regular caffeine shots, his supervisor evolves from strict to dictator quicker than Jean can grovel at his feet.)

Jean’s research project is something called _indominus_ – or at least, that’s what it says at the top of the brick of paperwork Levi throws at him, commanding him to read-up on everything before arriving at the lab the next morning.

Jean doesn’t know what _indominus_ refers to – if it’s some sort of dinosaur, he doesn’t know, and if it’s some sort of code word for something else, he _also_ doesn’t know. What he does know – as he flicks through the sheets of homework with a deflated wheeze – is that _indominus_ is patented by a number of corporate sponsors, as well as the Navy.

He’s not particularly surprised, given what Krista had said in the car the day before, and the fact that everything else in the park is saturated in a commercial veneer.

His research itself is pretty straight forward – or at least, he understands all of the long words in Levi’s document of instructions. Analysis of animal characteristics and extraction of the subsequent corresponding genetic sequences is something that he’s familiar with – his masters’ thesis was on the camouflage abilities of Amazonian tree frogs, after all. He knows all about sequencing genomes.

What he is _not_ used to, however, is the slave-driving every day from nine ‘till gone-seven at night. At least in Hanji’s lab, the Professor is always inviting people into their office for coffee, and half the day is spent lounging in front of the NMR waiting for results whilst fiddling with a Rubik’s cube.

The threat of being hung, drawn, and quartered hangs heavily in the air of this lab, and Jean realises quickly that he shouldn’t dare waste a moment’s time with Levi breathing down his back, and the time spent waiting for a print out of spectral results should be much better spent doing something else productive. If he’s not doing two things at once, he’s doing it wrong.

Within six days – by which he’s learned the art of bringing jet-fuel coffee in a _Jurassic World_ thermos with him to the lab – he’s jealous of the friends he left behind in Florida. He _really_ misses grad school. Heaven forbid, but it was _easy_.

And he’s also jealous of Ymir and Eren, even if it wounds his dignity to admit as much.

He rarely sees the pair of palaeontologists beyond when he crawls back to the hotel in the evenings, feeling like death and desperate for a beer, and they’re already in the bar, still caked head-to-toe in field dust and laughing up a storm.

They’re never at a loss of things to talk about and tales to regale Jean with – and he’s nudged with the elbow of the green goblin every time they boast about their adventures in the _triceratops_ ’ territory.

But every time Jean lets his mind wander to thoughts of field craft being better than Levi’s hierarchal sweatshop system – and the velveteen accent and serene smile of the park ranger he met on that first day – he remembers that he’s still mainly _petrified_ of dinosaurs, and the lab is really where he belongs.

 _Really, he’s much happier with test tubes_ , is what he insists to Ymir one day, when she’s swanning out of the laboratory after visiting the hatchery, and he’s ferrying a stack of print-outs back to his work bench. _Test tubes aren’t living, and breathing, and biting._

Ymir laughs at him, slapping him on the shoulder as she passes, and leaving a very prominent, sand-coloured handprint on his white overcoat. Jean frowns at it, trying to glance over his shoulder to see just how much she’s ruined his lab coat with her dinosaur dirt (and subjected him to Levi’s eminent wrath) – and doesn’t look where he’s going until it’s too late.

He bumps into something that lets out a muffled squeak, and in the same moment, he manages to dump all of his results all over the floor, papers flying everywhere.

“S-shit!” Jean exclaims, eyes flying first to the scattering of sheets of paper across the linoleum – and praying Levi didn’t see that – before he looks up at the person he’s walked into. “Shit, I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going— _fuck_.”

It’s the woman from the hatchery, whose dark, opalescent eyes he finds are wide and gently surprised. She tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear and shakes her head.

“It’s alright,” she says, bending down to gather some of Jean’s work. “Let me help. Levi doesn’t like mess, and he’ll only _go off on one_ if he sees.”

Her name is Mikasa, Jean remembers (or reads off her badge as he steals a glance at her as they rush to gather his paperwork off the floor, dusting it into a neat pile). She must be the same age as Jean, or perhaps a year or two older – it’s difficult to tell, because she hasn’t the same crescent-shaped bags beneath her eyes like the rest of the employees in the lab. ( _Actually, that probably makes everyone else look older_ , Jean muses.)

Mikasa scoops up the papers and sets them neatly on the closest work bench without a flake of her serene, if marbled expression. Jean decides to crack a joke to lighten the mood.

“Levi is a real hard-ass, isn’t he?” he jests, leaning back on the work bench. He almost loses his balance when he fingers slip over the edge of the table. Ever the smooth one. “W-what’s he got up his ass, huh? A _stegosaurus_ ’ tibia?”

He feels his hope get slurped brutally out of his tone when he glances at Mikasa’s stony expression. Quietly, she slips her goggles off her head, setting them on the work top, before turning to Jean. He gulps, wondering if he’s about to get yet another verbal whipping. (He’s lost count of how many of Levi’s he’s been subjected to this week.)

Without breaking face, Mikasa says, “A _t.rex_ tibia, actually. It’s far bigger.”

 

* * *

 

Jean likes Mikasa. He sees her floating around the lab from time to time, quietly spectral as no-one really seems to notice her, and she doesn’t notice them, barely offering a smile or a courteous nod to anyone.

But, Jean learns, she has a _wicked_ sense of humour. The first lunch break they spend together involves determining the _largest_ and _longest_ dinosaur bone that their supervisor could possibly have stuck up his ass to explain his abrasive behaviour; Jean hasn’t laughed this much – or at all – since arriving on the island, and Mikasa makes for a great change of pace to the monotony.

Jean makes sure to time his trips to the coffee machine to coincide with hers, and what starts as a gentle shared joked becomes Mikasa actually smiling at him from across the lab, and even coming over to Jean’s work bench to say hello when she’s not busy in the hatchery, tending to the tiny flesh eaters.

Dealing with Levi also becomes easier, thanks to Mikasa. Over lunches, she tells him the secrets to appeasing the thorn in their collective sides: presenting research to him before he asks for it, consistently proposing questions, and making sure that the bench is clean and tidy _at all times_. That last one is the most important, and Jean is forever grateful to the lab technician for saving his skin from becoming a hide on Levi’s living room floor.

He wouldn’t say that the supervisor _warms up_ to him, but when Jean receives a: “ _hm_ , good job, Florida,” from the man, he genuinely feels like he’s won the Nobel Prize.

 

* * *

 

On the eighth day since his near-death experience in the rickety airplane, the almost-fainting at the _t.rex_ pen, and the swooning in front of the handsome _triceratops_ keeper, Jean is caught by Mikasa in the locker-room just before he’s about to call it quits for the day.

“Jean, wait up,” she chimes, catching him by the elbow as he’s swinging his satchel over his shoulder. She’s abandoned her lab coat and safety goggles, and thrown on a light cardigan over her usual assemble of blouse, skinny-jeans, and Converse sneakers. She’s plaited a strand of her dark hair around the back of her head, and slapped on some bright lipstick where she would usually opt for clear gloss.

“You off somewhere?” Jean says, pausing in the doorway of the locker-room and appraising her general _put-togetherness_. “You look nice.”

“Couple of the guys are having a little get together tonight,” she says with a shrug. “Nothing fancy, just a few beers and some barbeque food. I … was _wondering_ , though … might you be interested in coming?”

Jean blinks owlishly at her, and points at himself clumsily.

“M-me?”

“If you’d like,” Mikasa smiles slightly, “Most of the guys going are handlers, so it would be nice to have someone there who I can talk to about dinosaurs _and_ lab stuff, if you know what I mean? It’s great and all talking about which _compsognathus_ dug its way under the inner perimeter, but sometimes I want to discuss _science_.”

She chuckles airily, and Jean supposes that it can’t _hurt_ to be social.

 

* * *

 

The handlers live in real _digs_ , and Jean doesn’t say that lightly. He would readily mistake the _shack_ that Mikasa pulls up to in her Mercedes for a pile of twigs and leaves, if it weren’t for the way she decisively gets out of the car and makes headway towards the fire-pit burning energetically on the veranda.

Jean throws his satchel into the backseat and hops out after her, rushing to catch up. He feels overdressed in his shirt and slacks (even with Mikasa at his side) when he lays eyes on the circle of people milling around on the decking of the dilapidated cabin, all dressed in similar khaki uniforms and _dirt_.

“Do all the park rangers live like this?” Jean whispers in Mikasa’s ear as they approach the timber steps. “Bit of a step down from all those luxury hotels they have back on the seafront.”

“Most of them, yes. It’s easier to live on site, so that if there’s an emergency during the night, they can get to the paddock within minutes,” she says, before chuckling, “But this one is _particularly_ disgusting, I’ll give you that. Connie and Sasha say they like the, quote, _rural living_ , unquote, but I do question them.”

 _Connie and Sasha_ , Jean muses. He pins the names to memory, hoping that at least knowing someone’s name will save his social graces from completely floundering. He’s not all that used to parties, and as he and Mikasa climb the steps towards the dancing fire, he recalls that the last _proper_ party he went to must have been in his sophomore year of his undergrad degree. Boy, was _that_ a long time ago.

Frankly, he’s never been a fan of the chaos. Too many people doing too many things whilst being _too_ drunk – and hence never being able to find a moment’s peace. And whilst alcohol seems to loosen the tongues of his friends and makes conversation so much easier, he’s always found the swirl of liquor to tighten his throat.

 _Not that it matters_ , he supposes, because this doesn’t look remotely like a college party. He’s always been more a fan of a quiet night drinking with a few friends and unforced conversation.

Now, if only he _had_ those few friends here – but the truth is that he sticks to Mikasa’s side like superglue when some tall, burly blonde guy in ranger gear offers them each a beer, and Mikasa moves to join some people she recognises.

Thankfully, Jean recognises some of them too: Ymir and Eren, who have clearly already made fast friends with the rangers they’ve been working with on their expeditions, and who have _clearly_ already started spouting the inebriated, dinosaur jargon, judging by the number of empty bottles around their feet. 

 _This is not like a college party at all_ , Jean debates, as Mikasa falls effortlessly into a conversation about the graces of the _whatever_ -osaur. _Literally everyone is talking about God-damn dinosaurs. They’re all Jurassic nerds._

Jean tries his best to keep up with the conversation when it turns to the finer points of _stegosaurus_ parenting behaviour, which is something Eren evidently feels immensely passionate about, but they might as well be speaking in a different language for how little he manages to follow.

Jean leans back on the barrel which he’s been provided to sit on, and throws back the last dredges of beer down his throat. Maybe he can excuse himself to go get another. Maybe he can drink enough just to get that happy buzz where he doesn’t _have_ to know what everyone around him is talking about. Maybe he can—

His roaming gaze stalls on a dark pair of eyes across the fire – and a brilliant _beam_. Jean’s breath hitches ugly inside his throat and he almost chokes on those last few drops of beer. He splutters and wipes his mouth on the back of his hands undaintily as the man across the circle – the _triceratops_ handler from the first day, Marco – eagerly jumps to his feet and wastes no time or formality in making his way over to Jean.

“¿Comó estás?” Marco grins, grabbing an over-turned bucket and scooting it up next to Jean. He folds himself up onto the tiny, aluminium pail, his legs practically at his chest, and knocks his half-full beer against Jean’s empty bottle in greeting, the contents sloshing. “How’re you?”

“I’m— I’m good,” Jean stammers, feeling his entire body tense up and all the alcohol in his veins go shooting to his face at that precise moment, just to punish him. He feels the familiar lick of sticky sweat across the back of his neck; nervously, he rubs at fine hairs of his undercut, willing himself to remember how to be cool, _be cool_ — “How ‘bout you? You’re, uh— you’re not up to your elbows in dinosaur poop this time.”

 _Not cool_. He should never be allowed to talk to people, _period_.

He assumes Marco humours him when he laughs – or perhaps Marco has already drunk enough to make him oblivious to Jean’s social stumbling. He throws his head back when he chuckles, his eyes flitting away to the floor, almost as if embarrassed. His cheeks look a little red, but maybe it’s the flickering light of the fire that’s making him look like he’s glowing.

“Perks of the job,” he muses lightly, pressing his beer bottle to his lips and slurping back a mouthful. The column of his throat bobs magnetically as he takes a drink – but Jean _totally_ isn’t looking. “As long as I don’t smell like _triceratops_ , uh, _poop_ , we’re good, no? That would be pretty bad.”

“N-no, no,” Jean splutters, “You smell good! Sh— shit, I mean, wait, no you don’t, you— I mean, you _do_ , but— _fuck_.” Jean deflates with a wheeze, willing the earth to open up and swallow him whole. Or a _t.rex_. That would be appropriate. Eaten alive by a _t.rex_.

Marco bellows with rich, flame-doused laughter, slapping his knee riotously. Jean is not sure whether to recoil with shame, or be thankful that Marco’s amusement might mean that he doesn’t find Jean weird.

 _Hell_ , Jean finds _himself_ weird.

“That’s good then,” Marco snickers, “Wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone if that were the case. Would be pretty bad for, uh— _you know_.”

Marco eyes glimmer, catching the night-time brilliance of oranges, yellows, and indigo blues from the fire-pit in the centre of the circle of chattering people. Jean isn’t entirely sure what _you know_ means, but he nods in dumb agreement, all too caught up in the way biting his tongue between his teeth as he smirks lopsidedly is fast becoming a recognisable habit of the _triceratops_ ’ handler. 

“Ah, you know, you never gave me your name,” Marco offers cordially, leaning in a little closer into Jean’s bubble of personal space. It’s difficult to distinguish whether the breath of dried grass is clinging to Marco’s clothes, or coming from the crackle of straw in the fire, but there’s an earthy, woody smell that Jean very much likes.

“Oh, it’s uh— Jean. I’m _Jean_ ,” he gabbles, picking incessantly at the label on his empty beer bottle, feeling Marco’s eyes firmly on the side of his face illuminated by the fire. “And you’re … Marco.”

 _You know that_ , Jean scolds himself. _And he knows that. He told you himself._

“Sí, uh— _yes_ , that’s me,” Marco grins, tapping the name badge pinned to his uniform with his index finger. “I don’t wear this thing as a fashion statement.”

Jean hadn’t noticed the badge before – all too busy torn between the sedated _triceratops_ and Marco’s very, _very_ distracting smile – but now he feels a little stupid.

“Oh, uh, _yeah_. That.”

Marco snorts lightly and reaches forward to take the empty bottle from Jean’s hands, much to his surprise when freckled fingers brush over his own. He can’t help but gawp as Marco props the bottle on the floor at their feet, and then raises a hand wordlessly for the burly, blonde man on the other side of the circle to throw him another beer.

He catches it effortlessly, and Jean is in awe – and possibly a little _turned-on_ – when he uses his teeth to remove the bottle cap. He spits the cap onto the floor and hands Jean the bottle, tapping his beer against Jean’s again with a glassy chink and a self-assured smirk.

“So, _Jean_ ,” Marco hums, “Is that … _French_ , or—?”

“No,” Jean says quickly, “I mean, _yes_ , I guess it is, but I’m not— I’m, uh, from Florida. Well, not originally, but— yeah.”

Marco nods appraisingly, taking another sip of beer and then wetting his lips with his tongue to swipe away the bitter flavour. Jean bites down hard on his lower lip until he leaves teeth-shaped indentations in his own skin. When it begins to sting, he drills his eyes into the floor – but his will is shamefully weak.

“That’s, uh— a nice name,” Marco says, his voice very low, and almost lost to the emberic crackle of the fire. “Muy guapo, no?”

“ _Guapo_?” Jean repeats the word slowly, furrowing his eyebrows. “What does that m—”

He’s cut off when someone – a man in ranger’s uniform and a buzz-cut – leans around Mikasa on Jean’s other side, and slaps Jean heartily on the back, making him splutter and almost drop his beer.

“Hey, pal, watch ya’ feet around the _Costa Rican Casanova_ there, alright?” the man cackles, his impervious grin manic and jesterly. “He’ll sweep you off ‘em before you have time to say _diplodocus_.”

The man bursts into raucous laughter as he pulls away and rocks back into his seat, hands pressed against his heaving belly. The woman on his other side, also a ranger, and with her chestnut-brown hair scraped up into a ponytail, begins to giggle uncontrollably as well; and even Mikasa spares a smile – but at least it’s sympathetic in Jean’s bewildered direction.

Marco is not so happy, and his smile twists into something playfully offended as he takes the bottle cap from Jean’s beer and flicks it at the forehead of the buzz-cut man. It hits him square between the brows. Marco has _remarkably_ good aim.

“¡Oye, Connie! ¡Cállate!” he scolds, “You’re in a pain in my butt, you know?”

“Always and forever, Marco, _mi amore_ ,” the man – Connie – cackles wickedly, his Spanish _butchered_ by his American accent. Marco scowls at him until Connie is distracted by something else, and then he turns back to Jean.

“Guau … Dios mío. Sorry about him,” Marco apologies meekly, rubbing the back of his neck. “He likes to, uhm— _embarrass_ me. Everyone. Himself. You can’t take him out anywhere, you know?”

“Does he work with you?” Jean asks, ducking his head to catch Marco’s line of sight which is abruptly flighty, dancing and dithering over the floorboards and the fire – and no longer Jean himself. “With the _triceratops_?”

Marco shakes his head, his chuckle breathy and light.

“No. No, Connie works with the … well, I call them _los dinosauritos_? The little dinosaurs. Baby dinosaurs?” he says, “Sí, eso es. The girl next to him also. That’s Sasha. They both work in the nursery.”

“Mikasa said that they have … bad taste in _interior design_ ,” Jean murmurs, nodding towards the wooden shack that is lit up in the myopic colours of amplified flames. “And exterior too, I suppose.”

“Oh— oh, _claro_ ,” Marco says, ducking his head and smiling to himself at Jean’s observation. “Yes. My house is not as bad as this one.”

In unison, they both take a gulp of beer and mulled thoughts – Marco stops the mouth of his bottle at his lips to chuckle, watching Jean candidly as he swallows a mouthful or two. Jean is bashful when he brings his bottle back to his lap, throwing Marco a bashful shrug.

“So, uh,” Jean begins, “You know all of these guys then? You think you could give me a run through? I’m pretty much the newbie here. Mikasa’s lackey, I guess.”

Marco chews on his lip and nods, scooting his bucket-stool closer to Jean, until their knees touch. Instinctively, Jean bows his head a little closer to the husky sound of the park ranger’s voice.

The truth is: Jean doesn’t so much care for names and faces – not with the simpering buzz in his head and the taste of wash-back beer acrid at the back of his throat when he swallows – but he’s guilty of wanting Marco to talk and savouring the charming whispers.  

Connie and Sasha work together in the nursery – where the hatchlings go after Mikasa has finished with them. Supposedly it will work like a petting zoo – and Jean isn’t exactly sure how he likes the idea of being able to pet _dinosaurs_ as if farm yard animals – but he doesn’t interrupt as Marco continues around the circle.

The blonde man with the beers is Reiner – he works with the _compsognathus_ , Marco snickers. He purrs in Jean’s ear that it’s a bit of a joke between the keepers that Reiner got landed with the smallest dinosaurs when he’s so hulking and brutish-looking, but the truth is that Reiner treats his pack like his children.

Next to him is Bert – a tall, awkward-looking fellow who seems to be keeping to himself and nursing a glass of water between his knees – who is a _parasaurolophus_ handler. Marco remarks that he was originally stationed in the aviary, but that the _pterosaurs_ were too volatile and aggressive for his skittish countenance.

There’s a blonde woman lounging on Bert’s other side, her work boots abandoned at the foot of her chair and her socked-feet slung over the other keeper’s lap. She’s dozing in the light of the fire, but every so often Jean catches a quirk in her brow and she’s frowns in her sleep.

Marco says her name is Annie, and she’s the _t.rex_ handler.

“But she’s so … _small_ ,” Jean says, “ _T.rex_? Really?”

“Sí, cierto,” Marco remarks. “You would not think it, but … Annie can hold her own against old lady Rex. She’s pretty scary.”

There are others too: a Thomas maybe, some chick called Mina, and a Franz, or a Francis, or something along those lines – Jean figures he’ll need a Spreadsheet to remember everyone and their jobs.

Marco is enthusiastic and attentive though, willing to describe the species of dinosaur that Jean doesn’t know by name, and then keen to listen to Jean talk about his research – and not be _bored_. Jean tries to return the favour by dappling in layman’s terms, and reining himself in when the animation in his voice becomes too palpable and he figures it must be humiliating to be so excited about a ladder of DNA less than ten kilobases long.

Not that Marco knows what a kilobase is – but he doesn’t question it either, merely tilting his head to the side every time Jean lets slip a piece of jargon from his clumsy mouth. Jean dares to find it cute, although he doesn’t say it out loud – not to the almost-stranger who he only just met. But he still _thinks_ it, and he wonders if Marco finds it attractive when his speech speeds up and he gets excited over things like genomes.

There’s something about the man that makes Jean want to open up – and he can’t quite put his finger on it, but it has something to do with the patience and the goading in his accepting smile, and the way the skin around his eyes wrinkles with teasing every time Jean stops to stutter and flush warm, caught up in his own jumble of words.

 

* * *

 

Jean’s jaw is beginning to hurt. He’s just-drunk enough not to realise immediately that it’s because he hasn’t stopped smiling for God-knows how many hours. The night has crept in dark around them, dissolving the hazy blue of the evening and replacing it with a swamping blackness that is lit by the clearest sky full of stars that Jean has ever seen and the distant cries of things he cannot place.

Marco hasn’t stopped smiling at him, too, Jean would like to stress. The quirk of the Marco’s lips seems far more natural and at home than the one that stretches Jean’s own skin and the muscles he rarely uses, but really, he would like to investigate the matter more, and maybe have a better look up close—

They’ve been sitting with their heads bowed together for a long time now, conversation hushed and Marco’s voice lilting as he talks, his accent oozing over his words in a way that would make Jean weak at his knees if he were standing.  Jean is near-deaf to everything going on around them, having voluntarily corked up his ears with Marco’s murmuring assents to his words and the insectal hum of alcohol clouding his better judgements.

But Jean’s never had particularly good luck. And despite how much nonsense much he can stuff into his cochlear canals and tune out from the world around him, he’s had eight, full days to learn that when Ymir wants attention, her voice can cut through any well-meaning defences.

“Jean! Oi, Jean!” she hollers from the other side of the girl named Sasha, “Earth to white boy, get your head out of Casanova’s ass!”

She grabs the bottle cap that was shot at Connie earlier and flicks Jean in the side of the head with it – although it’s more like a bullet than a bottle cap, the serrated edges stinging when it clips the skin above Jean’s ear. Jean winces.

“Huh—ah, what?!”

“Are you ready to go back to the hotel?” she quips, her words surprisingly coherent for the forest of empty bottles around her feet. The same can’t be said for Eren, whose head lolls on her shoulder, slobbering disgustingly over Ymir’s distasteful Jurassic Park t-shirt. (Does she not know that people _died_ back then?) “Mikasa said she’d give us a lift, so unless you wanna _walk_ or whatever …”

“A lift …” Jean murmurs, his head spinning as his eyes adjust from following the contours of Marco’s face for so long, to the light of the fire. “A _lift_ — right. Yes. That’d be, uh— good.” He turns to Mikasa, who he feels bad for having ignored almost the entire night after she had the courtesy of inviting him. He tries to figure out how to twist his mouth in a sympathetic and apologetic smile. “Thanks, Mikasa.”

Mikasa rolls her eyes, scoffing lightly as she tosses back the last drops of the squash she’s been cradling between her fingers. Briefly, her dark stare passes over Jean’s shoulder, catching Marco’s attempt at innocence. She smirks, but Jean is not quite sober enough to notice her subtleties.

Marco offers to help them carry Eren back to Mikasa’s Mercedes – because whilst the palaeontologist is a skinny kid, apparently he packs way more muscle than anyone had anticipated – or it just happens that Ymir doesn’t have enough motor skill to carry him herself.

Marco swings Eren over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift whilst Mikasa and Ymir say goodbye to their friends. Jean hangs back, murmuring a quiet thankyou to the burly man who had provided him with beer all night ( _doing the Lord’s work_ , Jean reasons), and follows Marco’s footsteps precisely across the shallow grass. Eren is thrown in the backseat and Ymir clambers in afterwards, leaving Jean the passenger seat – but he’s reluctant to commit to climbing in the car, especially when Marco lingers just outside the scope of the head lights.

“I’ll, uh— see you around!” Jean calls, unsure of how much his drunkenness could excuse a friendlier farewell, and so deciding to bypass the idea all together. He slides into the passenger seat, poking his head back of the open window and leaning on the door. “L-later then!”

He raises his hand to wave, but his fingers curl back into his palm when Marco takes a hesitant stride back towards him, dragging his fingers along the hood of Mikasa’s car. Jean eyes him curiously, because he doesn’t dawdle in the shade of shyness. Marco doesn’t seem like a _shy_ person, but maybe a little _coy_ — Jean’s forehead is beginning to hurt, his nose feeling stuffy. Early onset hangover.

He squints through the painful ache at Marco as he stops at the window and rocks back on his heels, his thumbs hooked assertively over the belt of his shorts.

“Do you, uh— want to drive up to my, how do you say, _neck of the woods_ tomorrow, maybe?” he says with a candid shrug of his shoulders, despite the quickness of his words, “We are introducing one of the juveniles back to the herd, and it’s pretty important stuff, so—” He presses his lips into a thin line and heaves his shoulders again, but maintains eye contact with Jean. “You know.”

“I’m not sure if … if I could escape from Levi,” Jean admits slowly, “He’s … kinda strict about all that stuff, and we’ve got a schedule—”

“Call it research and I am sure he would not mind,” Marco prompts, the corners of his lips twitching upwards, shamelessly. “You should come. Maybe … you will like it.”

Jean nods as Mikasa climbs into the driver’s side and revs the engine of the Mercedes – and he blushes furiously all the way back to the hotel.

 

* * *

 

Somehow – and Jean genuinely puts it down to a _miracle of God_ – Levi believes him when he tells his supervisor the following morning that he needs to go up to the _triceratops_ territory for research purposes. He waffles something along the lines of _triceratops_ showing similar behavioural patterns to rhinoceros beetles, and thus wants to make some notes and take some samples for his research – and apparently his innovation is enough to win Levi over. (That, or he’s entered some parallel universe where his supervisor actual found his chill, but Jean doesn’t care to stick around and find out.)

Mikasa is kind enough to offer him a lift – she says that it’s not out of her way, as she usually goes along for this sort of rehabilitation that involves the juveniles (most of which she’s hand-reared herself). Jean’s not sure why he doesn’t entirely believe her, but he’s grateful for someone who knows the way the dirt tracks wind up into the grass steppes of the mountainous island.

Jean can’t quite decide if this counts as one of his more _sensible_ ideas. Skipping out on Levi – skipping out on _real work_ to chase _triceratops_ and inevitable self-humiliation not clouded or excused by the pretence of alcohol – doesn’t seem like something he’d ever picture himself doing. He would never call himself a stickler for the rules, but he’s a stickler for … well, not putting himself out on a limb.

But he figures he threw all that to the wind when he agreed to live on an island full of man-eating reptiles for eight weeks. That might’ve benefitted from a little more rational thought.

And he’s allowed to have a little fun, right? He can’t be expected to go fifty-six days entirely fuelled on primal fear of what might or might not escape from captivity in the night and devour him whole in his bed. A little bit of whimsicalness might do his sanity good.

At least, that’s what he tells himself as Mikasa slows her car to a crawl in front of the Jurassic World banner and the large, orange letters reading Triceratops Territory that laud over the concrete gates of where they wish to go. Mikasa radios ahead, and whilst whatever reply she receives is lost as static to Jean’s ears, they don’t have to wait long before the gates creak open, revealing open bushland and overgrown thickets, and a pebbled track cutting through the undergrowth. Mikasa edges them forward, and Jean’s eyes are instantly scanning the ferns and the treeline for movement.

A park Jeep comes roaring in through the gates behind them, barely shooting through the closing doors, bouncing on the gravel and its worn-out suspension. Mikasa frowns into her rear-view mirror as the Jeep leaps onto their tail, following far too closely behind for Jean’s comfort and spluttering through the cloud of dust that Mikasa’s wheels kick up – but then she sighs exasperatedly.

“Connie and Sasha,” she explains deftly to a concerned Jean. “Also here under the pretence of helping out. But really, they’re just nosey.”

“I’m surprised they’re not hungover after last night,” Jean remarks, leaning against the passenger door. “They looked like they … drunk a lot.”

“Takes more than a hangover to incapacitate those two. Maybe we should’ve stayed at the lab today … at least Levi’s brand of peace and quiet is still distinctly _silent_.”

 

* * *

 

They come across a small convoy of trucks parked in the middle of an open plain where the grass is shorn shorter and the hillside is less rolling, littered with hidden rocks that Mikasa has to expertly dodge in her Mercedes.

There are two Jeeps – both the same as Connie and Sasha’s, plastered with the Jurassic World transfers on their flanks – and a large truck from which a cage has been unloaded. People in ranger uniform are milling around it, a cacophony of park keepers chattering into radios hooked over their breast pockets, clipboards tucked under their arms.

Whatever is inside the cage moves, and it catches Jean’s eye. He squints through the windscreen as Mikasa drops the handbrake and parks them some fifty feet from the commotion. Connie and Sasha pull up beside them, Connie tipping his sunglasses at Mikasa in greeting through his open window and Sasha leaping out of the driver’s seat barely after she’s killed the engine, running into the fray with a happy shout.

Jean figures it’s the juvenile _triceratops_ – the one that Marco had mentioned – in the cage. He has to admit he’d been more expecting something the size of a sheep, or maybe a large pig at most, but the young _triceratops_ that has been cooped up behind bars could probably take on a fully grown hippopotamus if it so wished.

“Jean, come on,” Mikasa smiles, unclipping her seatbelt and slipping out of the driver’s door. “Let’s get a better view, hmm?”

Jean follows Mikasa’s lead cautiously, following her as she scrambles up the hood of her Mercedes and onto the roof, settling herself with her legs hanging down over the windscreen. Jean is nervous about scuffing up the white paintjob with the hard soles of his shoes, but Mikasa bats him away with a wave of her hand, insisting that all repairs to her car are covered by company policy.

Jean spots Marco in the crowd almost immediately, eyes latching onto the ranger as he breezes orders to the people who scuttle around him, and following him as he crouches down in front of the juvenile, squeezing his hand through the bars in the cage to pet the _triceratops_ on the nose and whisper reassurances to it.

“What … are they actually trying to do?” Jean asks curiously, raking his stare away from Marco when he realises he’s been focussed on one spot too long.

“One of the females was a breeding female,” Mikasa explains, “We artificially inseminated her and had her lay her eggs and hatch them in a monitored enclosure. Sadly, the mother crushed all but one, but this little girl had some problems with her legs that needed looking at, so we had to separate them for a while so that she could get treatment. Whenever we breed _in vivo_ , as opposed to _in vitro_ in the lab, we try not to remove the young from the nest as it has a bad effect on the mother’s psyche – especially in _triceratops_ , as they share characteristics with rhinos and elephants, and their capacity for emotion is really astounding – but sometimes you just have to make an exception when the life of the mother or offspring is at risk.”

“And the baby is fixed up now?”

“Yes,” Mikasa nods, “It took a while to fix her legs, but she’s been up and walking for a few weeks now, and Marco has been eager to steal her back from us at the development centre. We’re hoping the mother will still recognise the cry of her offspring when it’s released back to the herd.”

“And what … if the mother _doesn’t_ remember it?” Jean says, pursing his lips into a thin line and returning his gaze to where Marco is still fawning over the juvenile, running his hand up and down its nasal horn through the bars of the cage.

“That’s why Connie and Sasha are here, I suppose,” Mikasa says, “They’ll probably take it back to the nursery and have it in the petting zoo until it reaches maturity, and then try again in a few months, and hope the herd accepts it as a new adult and not an abandoned baby.”

“Sounds complicated,” Jean admits, “But it seems like you guys really _care_.”

Mikasa smiles gently.

“Yes. Yes, I’d say we do. A lot of the people in the lab, and at human resources, and even Mr. Masrani himself … tend to view them as exhibits only. Things to be ogled at, things to be feared. Even in the hatchery, the infants are treated like specimens instead of babies, and sometimes it gets a little difficult, but—”

She sighs deeply, and Jean feels a little guilty knowing that he is one of those people she criticises. He’d much rather be on the other side of a glass wall; much rather have the only dinosaur DNA he comes in contact with be in a test tube; much rather keep his distance.

“But— well, you’ve probably seen by now how much Marco _loves_ his triceratops,” Mikasa continues. “First time I met him – a few months back now – was when we had our first _triceratops_ hatching in the lab, and he was there, as their handler-in-chief of course, and— don’t tell him I told you this, but he got a little bit tearful. Connie and Sasha laughed at him, naturally, but I honestly thought it was quite touching. No-one loves these animals quite as much as him.”

“I dunno,” Jean shrugs, “Eren could probably give him a run for his money. He’s got a dino boner for days.”

Mikasa smirks at that.

“Quite. I imagine he probably does.”

 

* * *

 

The release of the juvenile doesn’t go as Jean might have expected: when they unlatch the door of the cage, the baby _triceratops_ doesn’t want to leave, and it takes three keepers poking her in the rump and Marco tempting her with a branch from a nearby tree to coax her out from behind the bars.

After that, she’s far more interested in chasing after Marco, eager to seek out any snacks he might have on his person, rather than trundle off into the undergrowth to find the rest of the herd.

Jean can’t help but laugh at the sight, imagining a _Scooby Doo_ -esque chase as the _triceratops_ whines sadly when Marco shows her both his empty hands. Mikasa is not so thrilled, murmuring something about the dinosaur being too attached to its keeper and being fearful that it won’t want to go back to the herd – but she pauses mid-sentence with the not-all-too-distant cry of an adult _triceratops_.

The other keepers quickly bundle up into their trucks, clambering into the front seats and onto the roofs of their Jeeps so get out of the way of the bolstering adult that comes stomping through the thicket that lines the boundary of the plain, a roaring cry rumbling through its belly.

It’s barely been over a week, but Jean’s been cooped up in the lab all that time, and it’s a spectacle to see just how big the mature adult is – and it seems even bigger when it’s plodding towards the caravan of Jeeps, and not sedated on the ground.

The juvenile’s attention is warped from Marco to the thundering adult, and it gives a little cry of its own – shrill and fearful, Jean imagines, by the way the sound trembles from its lungs.

Marco seizes the opportunity to make a run for it, spinning on his heels and jogging towards Mikasa’s Mercedes as the thicket continues to rustle, and then parts sparingly for the lumbering bodies of more _triceratops_ – four, five, six— Jean loses count amidst all the leathery bodies and field of proud horns. Marco glances back over his shoulder when he hears the symphony of grumbling cries, and a grin spreads onto his exerted features when he sees the herd.

“Looks like the whole family is here,” Mikasa remarks, leaning down to lend Marco a hand as he hauls himself up onto the hood of her car. He gladly takes her fingers, scrambling up the windshield to squish into the small space between the two scientists, his shoulder flush against Jean’s and the air heavy in his throat as he breathes out in stiff puffs.

He shoots Jean a charismatic grin of greeting, and then extends his finger to point at one adult in the crowd in particular.

“The one with the chipped horn – do you see?” he breathes, a little winded, “She is the mother. Let us see if she recognises her trike, yes?”

His enthusiasm sparkles – even in a situation such as this, where there’s a very real possibility of the juvenile being rejected by its mother, and their hard work being for naught – and Jean is impressed. Mikasa was certainly right – Jean can see it in Marco’s eyes, in his chipper smile, in the way he fidgets, perched precariously on the precipice of the car’s roof, leaning forward in suspense as he listens to the baby call out again and again, and watches the adults tilt their great heads in the direction of the high-pitched sound.

“Ah, it looks like they have heard her! ¡Por dicha!” Marco exclaims, patting Jean on the knee to make sure he’s paying attention – even though Jean irrevocably _is_. The adults are curious of the baby, ducking their heads to sniff and snort at the grass where the keepers had been only minutes ago – no doubt _sceptical_ of the pong of humans.

The _triceratops_ with the chipped horn emerges from the centre of the herd, shuffling feet and low, grumbling snorts of air expelled from her nose. The young trike squawks again, throwing its head back with each noise it makes, and Jean notices Marco fisting his hands in the hems of his shorts in anticipation.

“Is she accepting it?” Jean whispers tentatively; Marco doesn’t tear his eyes away from the dinosaurs, but he leans into Jean’s side involuntarily, twisting his head so Jean might hear him. He seems to radiate heat.

“They are greeting each other,” he says, a playful smile toying with his lips and pulling at the dimples in his freckled cheeks, “Do you see how, uh— the adult, she bows her head? Yes, she is saying: hello, I am _triceratops_ , and you are also _triceratops_ , but we have not met. And you are so small! Por qué? Why is this?”

The adult raises its head and brays loudly at that moment, and seems almost to leap forward and pounce upon the juvenile with its colossal weight, knocking its beak against the flank of the infant, almost knocking it over. Jean is worried – worried that the adult might be attacking the baby that it doesn’t remember – but Marco and Mikasa both shoot upright, caws of delight exploding from their lips.

“¡Sí! ¡Oiga, Mikasa! She sees her!” Marco cries ecstatically, clapping his hands together and pressing his steepled fingers to his lips in thankful glee. “Thank _God_.”

“D-did she accept the baby?” Jean stutters. Mikasa turns to him as Marco presses a _tirade_ of rapid Spanish prayers into his fingertips.

“Yep,” she grins, “It looks promising. She recognises her infant.” She turns back towards the herd, and gestures with a nod of her chin in their direction. “Look. The other adults are welcoming her now too. She’s being accepted already.”

The crow of _triceratops’_ calls echoes reverberating in the humid air, raucous and disorderly, and the stomp of their collective feet on the dry earth vibrates the glass of Mikasa’s windshield, the tremble ricocheting up Jean’s legs and shaking his spine.

The mother _triceratops_ nuzzles the trike in the rear with her beak, prompting the juvenile forward, even if it does nearly trip over its own feet. The rest of the herd grumbles and groans, but their feet begin to move in a sluggish, languid sort of migration in the direction from which they emerged.

“¡Vamos!” Marco chirps, leaping to his feet on the hood of the car, and then springing onto the grass with unbridled energy pouring from his rapturous grin. Mikasa and Jean both stare at him in surprise as he gestures for them to jump down from the car roof.  “Come on!  Let us go and chase the herd!”

Jean throws a frantic look between Marco’s eagerness and Mikasa’s blank expression.

“Uh— I think— won’t Levi want us back this afternoon, or—?”

Marco slams his hands down on the hood imperviously, his expression both impish and brilliantly bold, matching the mischief-coated delight in his eyes. 

“No excuses, Jean,” he crows, “Now, ¡soque! ¡Soque! We don’t have all day!”

Jean looks back to Mikasa, his bewilderment almost frantic as he searches for help. Marco skitters his fingers over the metal of the car, the sound tinny and hollow – Mikasa watches him for a moment, her thin lips pressed together in a tight line; but then she shrugs.

“We can call it research,” she says cordially, “Levi can miss us for a little while longer.”

She slides down from the roof of the car, Marco catching her around the waist and lifting her from the hood, propping her on the grass courteously. The pair of them turn to look up at the hesitant Jean, Marco with his hands on his hips and his chest stretched broad.

“Vamos, Jean,” he prompts, his tone a little softer, “Let the dinosaur nerds kidnap you!”

Jean knows exactly what he _should_ do – and also what he _wants_ to do. Unfortunately for him, they are not one and the same.

This time around, it’s Mikasa’s serene smile, the murmur of rare, brewing excitement in his chest, and the expectant look in Marco’s eyes that persuades him to not follow the _sensible_ path for once.

 

* * *

 

Jean is shaken to learn that Marco is not nearly as expert a driver as Krista – considering the way his brain rattles around inside his skull and he feels a violent bruise poppying on his tailbone with how brutally Marco’s Jeep bounces across the uneven terrain. He clings to the passenger door as if his life might depend on it, one arm glued over the open window, and his other fist knotted in his seatbelt.

Marco follows the herd through the thicket, the growl of the Jeep’s engine making the _triceratops_ snort and paw at the ground when it gets too close, bucking their heads and mowing their way through the undergrowth a little quicker.

Jean doesn’t like the thought of what damage one of those horns could do to a car engine should one of the adults decide to turn around and take offense at being followed – but Marco laughs, telling Jean that the only interest the trikes take in the cars is if they need a good scratching post. (Jean can’t say he’s much a fan of that idea either, but Marco just chuckles as he wrestles with the clutch, shoving the Jeep into a higher gear.)

Mikasa tries to conceal her smirk in the backseat behind her slender fingers when Marco begins to regale Jean with all the names of his _triceratops_ – and then all their blood types, and their dates of birth, and which one is the matriarch, the prankster, the reckless – he has personalities for them all, and Jean wonders if the keeper is trying to impress him with all his _ceratosaur_ knowledge.

It makes a change to all the guys Jean’s _been out with_ before – if he can even compare this to any of those times, when Mikasa is third-wheeling in the back seat, Jean only just met this man, they’re chasing a band of _triceratops_ through the wilderness, and it is definitely, absolutely, unquestionably _not a date_ – but Jean could listen to Marco serenade him about dinosaurs forever, if for the novelty of the indomitable happiness that radiates from his every pore as he taps his fingers against the steering wheel and showers Jean with saccharine glance after saccharine glance from the corner of his eye, his expression coy and jovial.  

Jean’s all too used to having guys rabbit on about themselves, bore him stiff with the drone of their voice, and then cinch the deal by asking if they could come back to Jean’s place – which would always prove to be the _only_ thing said across the entire evening that would make their eyes come alive. (The truth of the matter is that Jean never brought a single one of them back to his apartment. But it really has been a _very_ long time since he’s been out with a man who didn’t _want_ something from him. It’s relieving to be (almost) alone with another guy and have that sincerity, and not the expectation.)

There’s also something refreshingly rewarding to be found in the way Marco’s encyclopaedic _zeal_ for all things herbivore strips away the Casanova smoulder and the intensity in his dark eyes that had made Jean squirm so much at the campfire the other night – and replaces it with something almost child-like. Jean likes it. Really likes it.

It feels so _genuine_.  

(There’s nothing cavalier or corporate about that.)

The herd grinds to a halt on the banks of a river that twists in muddy turns through the green blankets of the grassland, all murky waters and gregarious ferns hanging low over the listlessly-moving water. Marco stops the car some way back, leaning forward on the steering wheel eagerly to watch as the mother _triceratops_ nudges the juvenile towards the riverbank, edging the infant towards clumsily plunging its face into the dirty water and taking a drink.

“Mira eso,” he murmurs, completely submerged in the view. He turns to Jean – not necessarily seeing him, but wanting to share the prideful feeling in his chest. “Es increíble, ¿no?”

Jean blinks slowly, and hopes not to make a fool of himself as he tests the sound of Spanish on his clumsy tongue, repeating Marco’s words in what he hopes is the appropriate response.

“Es … _increíble_ ,” he replies hesitantly, watching Marco’s expression cautiously for sign of sustenance. Jean is rewarded grandly with a silly grin blooming on Marco’s Costa Rican features, and he ducks his head against the steering wheel for a moment, his forehead resting on the grooved leather as he laughs brightly – once – to himself.

“Sí, claro, Jean,” he chimes, colour staining his freckled cheeks, “Incredible.”

Marco twists around in the driver’s seat to talk to Mikasa, suggesting that she climb up onto the roof of the Jeep and try to snap a branch off the tree that overhangs them, and maybe use it to coax a curious _triceratops_ closer to them – he insists that they’re _always_ led by their stomachs when Jean raises doubt.

Jean clenches his knuckles around the cushion of the passenger seat when Mikasa heaves herself up onto the roof, her thin arm extending a willowy branch of greenery over the headlights of the Jeep, wafting the leaves around to attract the attention of nosy trikes. She catches the eye of an adult – a smaller one, hanging back at the edge of the herd, but it holds no guns in sauntering towards the car with all the rightful swagger of an animal its size. It buffets the radiator grill with its beak and the whole Jeep shakes – Jean can’t hold back his nervous squawk, the joints of his fingers white, but Marco laughs tunefully and reaches out to pet Jean on the knee, familiarly and reassuringly, hushing the word _relájese_ repeatedly in Jean’s ear.

The _triceratops_ nudges the car a few more times, but when it decides they pose no threat to its lethargic plodding, it hungrily chomps down on Mikasa’s branch, its brutish strength tugging her forward. She braces her feet against the base of the windshield and adjusts her grip on the branch, holding it firm with two hands as the _triceratops_ tugs greedily at the free meal, which doesn’t relent.

Mikasa dares to lean forward, holding fiercely tight to the branch and stretching out her pale fingers – and it’s her fingertips that manage to ghost across the ribbed bone of the _triceratops_ ’ horn. Jean can see the marvel in her hands, in the way she moves so tentatively, and in the tensile feeling in his own chest as he holds his breath and watches in wonder – because this is his first moment of _true_ wonder, here, on this island, not polluted by fear.

The _triceratops_ snorts, its muggy breath breezing through Mikasa’s neat hair and making her grimace – she pulls away, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, and grips the branch sturdily again as the dinosaur crunches down loudly on the leaves and the flaky bark.

Marco leans back in the driver’s seat, crossing his sculpted forearms across his chest, a cocktail of awe and sublime delight illuminating his dark features. He watches Mikasa and the _triceratops_ in mute captivation, a crooked smile on his lips, with a single dimple bracketing one corner of his mouth. Jean finds that he has relinquished his death grip on the seat cushion, and now his fingers feel numb – but at least he’s not trembling outright.

“Why … why the _triceratops_?” he finds himself asking, his faltering words puncturing the enraptured silence.

“¿Qué?” Marco says, not catching Jean’s words, but reacting to his voice. “Sorry, uh— what did you say?”

Jean picks at the loose fabric of his slacks, thumbing the lightweight fabric between the pads of his fingers. He feels nervous, but he’s not entirely sure why – maybe it’s just being asked to repeat himself.

“Why did you want to work with the _triceratops_?” he says again quietly, “Didn’t you want, maybe … something taller, or bigger, or … more exciting, with more teeth.”

“More teeth?” Marco laughs, twisting himself around to face Jean and folding one leg over the other, so that his ankle rests on the opposite knee. His posture is open, _confident_ , and Jean absorbs it. “I would like to keep all of my fingers, thank you. And you would not be able to, uh— get so _personal_ with other dinosaurs. They would eat your hand like a heartbeat— lo siento, _in_ a heartbeat, unless you put a muzzle on them … and I am not really a fan of that sort of thing, you know?”

“I suppose—” Jean murmurs, casting his gaze back out the windscreen, to where Mikasa is stretching out to graze her fingers across the nose of the _triceratops_ again, “They’re still _wild_ animals at the end of the day. Even if they’re stuck in a souped-up safari park or whatever.”

Marco’s eyes spill with something abruptly _fond_ , softening around the edges as he tilts his head to the side – Jean is taken aback, feeling the blood in his veins solidify at the change in expression to something tender.

“Yes,” Marco says softly, meeting Jean’s gaze curiously. “Yes. _Precisamente_.”

Jean feels warmth creeping stickily up the back of his neck and pooling in his palms; he wipes his hands firmly up and down his thighs to rid himself of the feeling.

“You didn’t answer my question though,” he says shyly, “Why the _triceratops_?”

The feeding _triceratops_ nudges the Jeep again, jostling Jean in his seat. His hands immediately fly to the dashboard to steady himself, the hackles on the back of his neck threatening to stand on end, but it’s the affectionate glance that Marco grants his trike that smooths the prickle in Jean’s skin. The keeper hums softly to himself.

“Back home in Costa Rica, we have, uh— how do you call them in English? ¿Las dantas? ¿Los tapis?” He playfully mimes a long snout – a trunk – in front of his mouth with his hand. “Tapirs? Sí, eso es. My family live on the outskirts of the city, so sometimes the tapirs would, uh— try to steal the trash that we put out on the street. You know, they smell the food, and then they want to eat it— _pues_ , my older brother kept trying to scare them away, but I quite liked them. They have quite … noble faces, I think. When I was little, I sometimes encourage the tapir to come to the house because I thought it was my friend, _pero_ —”

Marco pauses with the sound of a chuckle drawn from Jean’s lips like wellspring water, dredged up from somewhere deep within – he laps up Jean’s prized laughter with his own.

“Yes, it’s silly, I know,” he chuckles, “But I was only little, and— _you know_. Bueno, the _triceratops_ , they have very similar behaviour to the tapirs back home, so you could say that it was a sequence? A progression, I mean.”

Jean gestures crudely at their surroundings.

“I’m not sure what part of this you can call a natural progression,” he smarts, “More like science sticking its nose in where it doesn’t really belong.”

Marco purses his lips and shrugs.

“Somebody has to make sure that they do not get treated like science experiments,” he says, echoing Mikasa’s words from earlier that had stung Jean with the toxin of guilt. “Some of the people here forget that they are animals.”

“But don’t you, like … get scared sometimes?” Jean pries, edging closer on his seat, “Being stuck on an island with a bunch of giant reptiles that would probably gladly eat you for breakfast if given half the chance? Don’t the locals call these islands _las cinco mortos_?”

“Las cinco _muertes_ ,” Marco corrects, purring his Spanish, “And no. Not scared. This is a once in a lifetime thing, you know? I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”

Something stirs in Jean’s chest, and he puts the squeezing of his internal organs – and the subsequent ache – down to the intensity with which this man _loves_ his animals. It’s admirable. Commendable. It makes Jean feel a little hot behind the collar. He holds back the wheeze that tries to wrangle its way up his throat.

They accept the silence for a while, watching the _triceratops_ drink from the river and graze the luscious greenery that is suspended over the water. The moment is – in its own bizarre sort of way – spell-binding. There’s something so _surreal_ about watching these cretaceous beasts through the flimsy film of a windshield that makes Jean long to pinch himself and question if he’s dreaming. It’s just enough to allow him to erect a barrier – glassy, transparent, and indelibly _strong_ – between him and his fear; between him and the nagging sensation that this is not natural, and nor is it safe – and the feeling that opiates his veins is little more than open-mouthed awe.

Jean wonders if he could fall in love with these animals too, just from watching Marco watch them.

He’s not all that opposed to the idea.

(And that’s a far cry from the shivering wreck he was in front of the _t.rex_ just over a week ago.)

(Even if he should clarify that there is a distinct difference between _triceratops and I’m-gonna-eat-you-for-breakfast-and-use-your-bones-for-toothpicks_.)

“The, uh— the frilly bit,” Jean says, miming the shape of the _triceratops_ ’ epoccipital frill with his hands in the hope of appearing knowledgeable. “What’s that about? For fighting each other?”

Marco scoffs lightly and shakes his head.

“¿Qué? No. No, that’s, uh— _unlikely_.”

“W-well,” Jean pouts, “I, never claimed to be an expert in triceratopsology, okay—”

“They’re for courting,” Marco interrupts gently, “For display, or … dominance, maybe. Like deer with their antlers. With the _ceratopsids_ , it’s like, the more holes in the bone, or the more _ventanajes_ , or maybe the _bigger_ it is—” He leans in closer, and Jean is prickled by how _husky_ his voice becomes. “— the more _impressive_ it is. More likely to attract a mate. Don’t you think?”

Jean _knows_ he blushes. There’s an eclipse in both his eyes – the black of his pupils so blown that the rings of his irises are barely halos of colour – and he wets his lips with the tip of his tongue as he lets his gaze dip shamefully to Marco’s lips as they curl into a satiated smirk.

But Marco pulls away with a grin, biting his tongue between his teeth audaciously and returning his dark eyes to Mikasa bonding with the _triceratops_. Jean resists the urge to rasp like an over-boiling kettle, and suffocates the steam that wants to pour from his ears.

“—or so our research suggests,” Marco defers impishly, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s a lot easier to know these things when you can watch them interact in reality, and not have to guess from fossils and computers. We’ve learned so much, so quickly.”

“B-being stuck in the lab all day makes you forget what’s out here,” Jean huffs, willing his cheeks to stop burning in betrayal. “It’s all test tubes and spectrometers all day every day for me – not that I don’t like that stuff, but— even when everyone’s buzzing around the hatchery with the new exhib— the new _eggs_ , it feels kinda … unreal, I guess? Like I’m sitting in the cinema with surround sound, watching some movie with a big CGI budget and elaborate animatronics.”

“You should sneak away more often,” Marco teases, “Get out of that place and – ¿cómo se dice? – _get a feel_ of what the park is really like. This is the reason you are here, and not some espectró-whatevers.”

“Spectrometers,” Jean corrects automatically. “They’re used for— actually, it doesn’t really matter. I, uh— I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing the park a bit more. As long as it’s not too personal with the _t.rex_ , ‘cus I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to _that_ , but—”

 _I wouldn’t mind seeing_ you _more often, either_.

Marco chuckles lightly, leaning back in his seat comfortably, chewing on his lower lip. Mikasa exclaims something from outside as the trike yanks the branch from her grip, causing her to almost lose her balance and nearly stumble forward, off the hood of the car – but Marco doesn’t blink, even as the adult _triceratops_ snots triumphantly, gnawing on the bark. His eyes don’t leave Jean.

“Sí, there’s always a spare seat on my quadbike if you would like that.”

“Guess I’ll have to f-find an excuse to take you up on that offer,” Jean splutters. He tells himself that the momentary flutter in his stomach is because he’s happy to have made a friend (even if he is going on twenty-five, and _making friends_ should be a trivial and nonplussing thing) – and he reckons he believes it.

Jean is gullible in that way.


	2. Chew Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some key, Costa Rican phrases:  
> "Por dicha": thank goodness.  
> "Soque": hurry up!  
> "Que m'iche?": what's up?  
> "No me digas!": no way!  
> "Me caes bien": I like you (I fell good for you).
> 
> Please enjoy the read, and let me know what you think! Comments are always loved and appreciated, and my Tumblr inbox is always open.

In the following week, Jean finds it difficult to get away from the lab, constantly rushed off his feet by the influx of so many more people in billowing lab coats. He’s not entirely sure how many people he has the same conversation with – but they’re all burly men and distinctly _not_ scientists by trade, whatever _InGen_ might write on their employment records – and they’re all bubbling with eagerness over the results of the _indominus_ project. Jean doesn’t understand what’s so exciting about it, but whatever it is that they know, he _doesn’t_.

Jean tries to steer clear of their clunky boots and clumsy elbows, ducking under hands and arms and dancing on his feet as he nips between his work bench and the spectrometer, avoiding the ever-present loom of someone he doesn’t know monitoring his progress – and it barely takes a day for it to click how _militarised_ the lab has become.

Levi has a regimen, but at least that’s only a result of him being _strict_. There’s something brash and vulgar about this flush of new employees, and Jean doesn’t like it. It rubs him the wrong way, and that way lends itself to the sparkling display of corporate signs and neon lights that now light up the main street, and to Krista’s words on that very first day.

He doesn’t want to dwell on it. It’s not his problem; it’s not his _business_. He’s only here for five and a half more weeks, and then it’s back to Florida – commercial metropolis as it is, but at least it doesn’t try to pretend otherwise – but it doesn’t neutralise the acid burn in his stomach when he sees how numbers and figures and _potential_ pours out of people’s ears, and the care for things like _animals_ gets swept all too quickly under the rug.

What Jean _does_ dwell on is his burdening jealousy of Ymir and Eren, who neither have to deal with the hustle of the laboratory nor the bludgeoning concerns over working for public spectacle, and who parade in and out of the lab on whims and wishes. Jean doesn’t necessarily want to be in the field, but he’s envious of them being _out there_ nonetheless. Envious of their raucous laughter and the friendships they’re clearly making. Envious of the fact they’ll have _experiences_ to share when they return to their laboratories in the States, and not just results. Envious of all the time they get to spend with the handlers and the park keepers—

Jean pretends he doesn’t admit it to himself, but even within the chaos of the lab, he feels lonely at times. He wishes he could take Marco up on his offer to escape once in a while.

Jean can also tell that Mikasa is reluctant about the changes in the lab too. It’s not like she was ever one to talk much, but Jean notices she keeps to herself even more than usual. He’s grown used to her quirks – how she’s not reluctant to talk to people, just reserved in nature – but not he notices that she actively goes out of her way to avoid the _InGen_ staff. She prowls like a mother tiger around the hatchery, swatting greedy hands away from curiously touching the incubating eggs, and she brushes off the jovial laughter and scolded expressions with an icy cold shoulder. Jean appreciates her discomfort to an extent – it lets him know that his unease is not all in his head.

 

* * *

 

Sixteen days to the day when he touched down on Isla Nublar with a suitcase full of entirely wrong expectations, Jean is slumped in front of an incubator full of cracking _dilophosaurus_ eggs, baking under the heat of an infrared red lamp; the time on his watch reads near eight o’clock at night.

He was meant to be out of the lab over an hour ago – and everyone else in white coats sure as hell vanished on the dot of clocking-out – but with all the extra bodies filling up the glass-walled space, Jean’s been struggling to get everything finished on time. As such, he owes Levi a report on his desk tomorrow morning – _if only his results were making sense_.

He’s long since stuffed the documents in his satchel, his eyes burning from tracing meticulously over the figures and understanding nothing, and it was Mikasa who had found him in the locker-room, very near to complete brain meltdown, and offered to look over his notes over dinner after she escaped her shift.

Mikasa’s shift ends at eight, but there’s a period where she’s the only one on duty. Jean relishes the peace and quiet, even if it is punctuated periodically by the chirping squawks of the hatching _dilophosaurus_ as they poke their sticky snouts through the fragments of their egg shells. Mikasa coos over them, peeling away loose bits of shell as the tiny dinosaurs try to wriggle free and find their feet, astounded by the glare of the laboratory lights and the enormous faces peering over them from above.

Mikasa prods at the rounded crests on the skulls of the hatchlings with the rear-end of her flashlight, and then inspects their eyes for cataracts, returning to her notepad to scrawl in her swirly handwriting any observations that she might make.

Jean doesn’t see the appeal – not when they’re still covered in bloody membranes and stodgy gloop and in need of a good wash – but Mikasa has stressed before the importance of imprinting, and she doesn’t want the first memory of the hatchlings to be of someone recoiling in horror from their appearance.

“You ever get tired of it?” Jean muses, checking his watch for the umpteenth time. “Putting so much care and attention into them, only for them to be treated like inventory once they get big enough to move out?”

He knows that Mikasa is not deaf. There have been exchanges in the lab of late that he knows they’re not supposed to be hearing, nor wanting to hear. _Militarised exhibits_ is not the snippet of conversation Jean wanted to steal from the Navy operatives – he and Mikasa concluded they are all Navy men – in the corridor.

“We have to do what we can,” Mikasa admits, using the end of her flashlight to push one of the more energetic infants away from edge of the incubator basin. “These guys weren’t meant to ever exist in the first place, so it’s not their fault they get treated like that. Maybe if someone gives them the benefit of the doubt, things won’t be so bad when the inevitable happens.”

“The inevitable?”

“Not everyone on this island agrees with _InGen_ and what they do,” she says, but then sighs, “But I doubt the nature of capitalism can be beaten by some disgruntled lab technicians and some sentimental park rangers.”

“’S only gonna get worse when the park opens for business,” Jean agrees, pressing his lips together into a tight line, eyes following the zigzagging path of a tiny _dilophosaurus_ as it tries to nip at the hind quarters of its sisters. “I don’t know what they got me working on – I don’t even think Levi knows outright – but it’s stinking to high heaven already of corporate megalomania.”

“Do you have the bad feeling too?” Mikasa presses, glancing up at Jean over the rims of her goggles.

He nods, not needing to say the words that have become fast-growing weeds in his mind – and that were merely hidden behind too-white and too-insincere smiles until now.

Jean is not stupid. He knows that creating a glorified _safari park_ is just not good enough with this level of technology at their disposal. Something worse is going on behind the scenes, and he has an inkling—

His thoughts are cut short by the brittle tap of knuckles on glass somewhere behind him; he twists around on his stool, expecting to see whoever is supposed to be turning up to relieve Mikasa from her shift, asking to be let in the door – but is _pleasantly surprised_.

“What’s he doing so far out of his paddock?” Mikasa jokes dryly, pushing her goggles up into her hair. “The fences must be down.”

Marco is on the other side of the hatchery door, pressing his identification up to the glass with a silly pout of his lower lip, begging pathetically to be let in. Jean can’t help the self-gratifying smirk that claws at his lips, teasing the corners from the tight line of thought into an upward quirk.

“I dunno – should I get the cattle prod? Tranquiliser darts?” Jean jests, slipping off his stool as Marco taps on the glass with his pass again, his eyebrows pulled up in the middle of his brow into a pitiful plead.

“ _Kinky_ ,” Mikasa teases sarcastically, earning a groan from Jean as he drags his feet towards the door.

Marco positively _gleams_ as Jean strides over to him, so Jean sarcastically exaggerates the heave of his shoulders and a defeated sigh in his chest as he swipes his laboratory ID against the keypad. The light above the door flashes green and Jean hauls the handle, letting Marco slip into the lab with a sly chuckle.

“¿Qué pasa?” he grins, pocketing his identification in the breast pocket of his ranger uniform, mushrooming a cloud of dust when he pats himself down. Jean quirks an eyebrow – more at Marco’s general state than anything, considering he looks like he’s been brushed from head to toe in sand and grime, and is possibly running late to an _Indiana Jones_ -lookalike competition with how grubby he is. “Eren said that you were being worked like a bone—”

 _To the bone_ , Jean internally corrects.

“—and I thought I would come and pay you a visit, seeing as you haven’t come to see me yet.” He grins naughtily, as if Jean’s just caught him doing something inherently bad or against the rules, but Jean just rolls his eyes. The brazen familiarity of Marco’s smile does tickle him though – and it’s justifiable as a sunny Costa Rican countenance.

“You just got off shift, huh?” Jean says, gesturing at the state of Marco’s uniform with a flick of his wrist. “That better be mud on your clothes, and not something else.”

“I promise not to get any on your nice, white lab coat, Señor Científico,” Marco jokes, side-stepping around Jean as he wipes his hands on his abdomen, which only generates more cloudy puffs of dust escaping from the stiff fabric. “¡Oye, Mikasa!” he calls, throwing a candid wave in Mikasa’s direction. “¿Pasa algo? What are you working on today?”

“ _Dilophosaurus_ ,” she replies courtly, “We’ve just hatched six, healthy young ladies. Come take a look.”

“Ah, ¡no me digas!” Marco exclaims, leaping past Jean and hurrying over to the basin where Mikasa fusses over something snapping at the end of the torch she dangles into the hollow. “Have they had a feed yet? Can I feed them?”

“I was just about to,” Mikasa says, handing Marco the box of latex gloves balancing on the side of the incubator. “Glove up. I’ll get the kit.”

Jean hangs back, watching Marco from the door as Mikasa returns with a pair of tweezers and what looks like a Chinese takeaway box full of scraps of raw meat. Jean frowns when she opens the lid, the pink remains of some poor rodent visible to both him and the hatchlings, which start chirping violently and voraciously, scrabbling at the sides of the incubator and snapping their tiny jaws.

Marco laughs joyfully as he takes the tweezers and pinches a shred of meat between the two, metal prongs, lowering it towards the chattering snouts of the baby _dilophosaurus_.

“Cuidado, pequeño,” he teases, his eyes lighting up as the pocket-sized carnivore snaps up the meat and swallows it whole, the lump wolfed aggressively down its throat. “You don’t want to choke.”

The hatchlings jostle for the best pickings, scratching and nipping at the rumps of one another, and scrabbling to get close to the tweezers as Marco lowers another chunk into the incubator. Jean is amazed at how _energetic_ they already are, having only been hatched mere moments ago – but energetic, of course, translates to more than capable of chowing down on a few fingers if given the chance.

He’s able to ignore it, though – and push the thought to the back of his mind – because he is _more_ amazed by the uninhibited _fascination_ that ripples across Marco’s expression and laces his laughter every time a _dilophosaurus_ snaps another morsel from the tweezers.

 _How many times has he does this_ , Jean wonders, _And yet he’s still so amazed by it._

The stark comparison between Marco and the Navy men, masquerading as lab techs and scientists, writes itself. Jean doesn’t even need to _think_ it – but think it he does nonetheless.

“Jean, ¡venga! Come!” Marco calls, waving with his free hand to reel Jean over. “You should have a go! ¡Venga, venga!”

Jean doesn’t question the feeling of a fish hook lodged beneath his ribs and doesn’t resist to his feet moving of their own accord. When he’s within reach, Marco grabs Jean’s bicep in his vice grip, manhandling Jean in front of himself and pressing the tweezers into Jean’s skittering fingers in the same instance.

Jean squawks – he’s not used to being touched so freely, and the sweep of Marco’s hands up his arms and to his shoulders surprises him in a way that makes him hiccup – but Marco mistakes the noise for something else.

“It’s okay, I promise I won’t get your coat dirty,” he laughs, but Jean feels his warm breath against the shell of his ear – and it really _doesn’t_ make anything better. He holds Jean firmly in front of himself, his chin mere inches from resting on Jean’s shoulder, and Jean is pin-pricklingly aware of the slither of space between his back and Marco’s chest. “ _Vamos_. They’re hungry.”

Mikasa holds the tub of meat scraps out to Jean, who hesitantly tries to pinch a morsel between the blades of the tweezers – easier said than done when he drops the first few back into the container, much to the annoyance of the squawking hatchlings. Marco coos at them from over Jean’s shoulder, making ridiculous noises that Jean would smart at, if it weren’t for the way he feels every vibration of Marco’s voice so intrinsically against the side of his throat.

His hand shakes as he successfully manages to seize a shred of meat and he dangles it nervously over the grappling flurry of little mouths and razor sharp teeth.

“First time feeding a carnivore,” Mikasa chuckles at his nerves, and Jean wishes it was just that, but he knows in his gut that it’s not. “Don’t worry Jean, we were all like that. Just make sure to keep your fingers clear, because they’ll gladly have one of those in an instant, alright?”

Jean drops the scrap into the incubator and two of the hatchlings tussle greedily for the meat, tearing at either end until it rips amidst the turmoil of clicking teeth and angry braying.

“They’re more scary when they get big enough to realise who is holding the tweezers is good food too,” Marco breathes airily, his fingers digging into Jean’s shoulders.

Jean tries to laugh it off, but he doesn’t think he’s all that convincing.

 

* * *

 

Marco accompanies Jean and Mikasa to dinner – and Jean would like to say he was the one with balls to ask, but it was Mikasa’s proposition. Still, Marco had glanced to Jean, a glimmer in his eyes as he sought silent and gleeful permission; Jean had played it cool with a shrug of his shoulders and the off-hand remark that Marco would have to deal with their paper pushing, but the skip in Marco’s step had been almost contagious.

 _Almost_. Jean isn’t the sort of person to skip.

The restaurant they wind up in is the same one Jean visits on the nights he is caught by Ymir and Eren, and not allowed to burrow away in his hotel room with room service – tacky and pretentious, with _real_ animatronic dinosaurs stuck on loops of roaring sound effects, and rubber _pterodactyls_ hanging from the ceiling, spinning around aimlessly with the wisp of the air conditioning. It’s quiet, causing Mikasa to remark crassly that it won’t be so empty for so much longer, and they can kiss goodbye to no queues and quick drinks once the park opens.

Jean orders a _Cretaceous burger with pterosaur fries_ , and whilst he hopes to high heavens it doesn’t contain actual dinosaur, there’s a bitter part of him that doesn’t put it past _InGen_. He masks the sour taste in his mouth by poking fun at the names, and asking Marco what makes his Jurassic steak distinctly _Jurassic_.

“Because it tastes like _apatosaurus_ ,” Marco jests, tongue between his teeth as he grins wryly.

“They’ve cured the meat for one hundred and fifty million years,” Mikasa adds, “Extra flavour.”

Jean forces a smirk, but drowns it behind a long slurp of his drink.

He distracts himself from prevailing thoughts by extracting the stack of brick-heavy paperwork from his satchel and spreading the loose sheets out on the table top. Mikasa is admirable in the way she focuses so diligently in a moment, scooting the maze of graphs and figures towards herself, her thin eyebrows knitting together into a frown as Jean marks the point in his research where he’d tumbled head over heels into brain ache.

They push the papers back and forth across the table top for some time, jargon splattering the wood and making their food taste like little more than something to chew, too caught up in long words and tiresome concepts to really appreciate how their dinner tastes.

For all Jean’s misgivings, at least he can say that he’s fluent when it comes to science. He doesn’t stumble or stammer or second guess the things he’s saying – for every frustrated suggestion he makes, Mikasa considers it with a nod and a thoughtful scowl, feeling herself equally stuck in wading through the mud.

The thought that Levi might have Jean’s head for taxidermy on his wall should he not finish his report by the next morning doesn’t leave Jean with much hope, and he feels his resolve dwindling with the falling level of his drink and the disappearance of fries from his plate.

“—I just don’t see how it can be isoleucine here,” Jean laments, jabbing his greasy finger at a table of spectroscopic data. “Just leucine, sure, but that doesn’t make sense— fuck, _none_ of it make sense. I don’t even see how it can be aliphatic in the slightest!”

“I definitely think it’s supposed to be aliphatic, but the peak distribution just doesn’t seem to line up,” Mikasa frowns, fishing through the paper pile for another graph, which she stares out fiercely, blindly guiding the straw of her drink to her lips in the same moment. “Could you not just increase the frequency and run another sample? Maybe it’s systematic. Levi can’t blame you for that.”

“Levi will _try_ ,” Jean groans, “Why can’t it just be a _valine_ terminator— my life would be so much easier, and—” He stops himself abruptly as Marco reaches across the table to sneak another of Jean’s fries from his plate. He might not have realised that his dinner was depleting not on account of himself, but he does realise that the park ranger has not spoken in a long time. Marco grins apologetically, retracting his hand with a cheeky smile. Jean feels bad.

“S-shit,” he stutters, “Sorry, this stuff must be really dull to listen to—”

Marco shakes his head, pushing a fry between his lips good-humouredly.

“No, it’s fine,” he says kindly, “It’s nice to see you … _you guys_ so passionate about something. Even if it _does_ sound like nonsense to me. Are you sure that it is English?”

Jean snorts, sliding a few sheets of paper towards Marco, his fingers leaving greasy prints in the margins. He scoots his chair around the table, the wooden legs knocking against those of Marco’s seat, and braves to lean into Marco’s space, grabbing a particular graph from the pile and presenting it face up.

“’S not that complicated, see?” he says, “This here is telling us what molecule we’re looking at, but we’re trying to figure out what these extra lines are doing here, because— because based on thiiiiis data over here—” Jean wiggles out a table of values from the sprawl amidst their emptying plates, laying it next to his spectroscopy results. “This one is telling us that the molecule should be something else to what we’ve got, and…”

Jean explains the problem diligently, shuffling papers around and running his hands through his hair exasperatedly every time he can’t find the numbers that he wants – only for Mikasa to wordlessly hand them to him – and Marco nods to everything he says, even if his eyes stray to Jean’s animated face more than to Jean’s words or Jean’s fingers pointing at Jean’s numbers.

Jean pretends it’s just a figment of his imagination – maybe he should’ve asked for a non-alcoholic drink – but Mikasa’s gentle smile over the lip of her glass, followed by the way she casts her eyes away politely, speaks volumes otherwise. He feels his cheeks growing warm at the attention – and he wishes he could focus on it more, rather than stupid _data_.

 

* * *

 

Jean has passed through all five stages of grief and settled on acceptance by the time he and Marco are midway to Mikasa’s apartment, having offered to walk her back in the dark. Even with Mikasa’s rationale, their combined forces had fallen flat in lieu of whatever decidedly _nonsensical_ data the printer had spewed out that afternoon, and Jean can only accept the berating he’s going to receive from Levi’s sharp tongue in the morning.

Mikasa wishes him luck when they leave her at her door, offering Jean a friendly hug that doesn’t quite dispel the impending doom, but is enough to pad its sharp edges – even if she does dryly offer to collect his remains and hand them over to the extraction team, so that they might make a clone of him for the park. Marco finds her dark wit insatiably funny, but Jean grumbles, tossing a careless _goodbye_ over his shoulder as he grabs Marco’s shirt sleeve crabbily and drags him back down the road they just walked.

Marco chatters all the way back to Jean’s hotel, his voice loud and unabashed in the dark; Jean notices how the Spanish burr becomes more pronounced in Marco’s purring drawl when there’s alcohol in his system – even if it’s only one beer. Jean doesn’t complain, silently reaping the jarring _r_ ’s  and soft _sh_ -sounds at the end of his words, quietly appreciating the sensuality.

Jean enjoys the peace – it’s a rare sort of virtue in Miami, where, even with its clean air and green spaces and excuses, it’s still a city, and cities cannot afford to sleep. This place will follow suit all too soon. He knows as much, but he can still relish the moment whilst it lasts: sea breezes and the rustling of palm trees, the shrill call of what-could-be birds in the undergrowth if one didn’t know better, lulling conversations, and elevator music that lolls on the peripheral.

Marco walks Jean to his room, accompanying him through the sprawling maze of corridors and hotel-room doors, and teasing Jean over wrapping his knuckles against Ymir or Eren’s door and waking them – but when Jean slides his keycard through the lock and offers Marco to come inside for a drink, the man declines. Jean feels the plummet of a hope he was unaware he was cradling in his chest.

“I’m still on call,” Marco reasons, leaning against the doorframe. “I need to be close if they need me in the night.”

Jean makes a poor effort of concealing the disappointment in his face; when he tries to hide it by fiddling with the zip on his satchel, he’s dawdled too long, and Marco has seen.

“But … just because I say no, doesn’t mean I don’t want to,” he adds enigmatically with a small, near-meek, near- _coy_ shrug of his shoulders. He twiddles with his own fingers, toying with his knuckles and the joints in his index finger as he eyes flicker flirtatiously from floor, to face, to floor again. “I’ll see you around, Jean. Buenas noches, ¿vale?”

Jean’s not sure what feeling it is that bubbles in his chest when he shuts the door, leaning back against it with his palms pressed flat against the wood. He’s not even sure if he wants more of it, but perhaps he’s not opposed to finding out. Maybe it’s worth listening to his gut.

 

* * *

 

Over the next two weeks, Marco comes to the lab in the evenings precisely eight times – but Jean swears he doesn’t keep count. He’s the one who stays after hours in the hatchery every night, and just so happens to be there when Marco appears, after all. (And it’s not on purpose. Honestly.)

Marco earns a fair share of weird and often distasteful looks from the straggling scientists dithering on their way to clock out, unappeased by the presence of dirt, and dust, and contaminants – oh, and as well a man who doesn’t belong – in the lab. Jean wonders if some of them have forgotten entirely that a world exists beyond the white walls and bright lights, and that the park itself is a functioning thing beyond the idea of the front _InGen_ have created. He wonders if seeing a park ranger, sneaking into the labs on an unauthorised ID late at night, is an uncomfortable reminder of the things they have done, and the things they are doing, and the way they reduce _exhibits_ down to reels and reels of _numbers_. He wonders if the scientists and lab technicians who frown in Marco’s direction scowl at him because he’s in the way, or because they’re clandestinely _jealous_ of the bond he has with the animals.

Jean, himself, is not-so-secretly happy on the days when Marco taps on the glass door of the hatchery, a dumb grin plastered shameless across his face every time. He can tell Mikasa enjoys the company too, and must be glad of the chance to talk openly, given how tightly zipped she keeps her emotions during the palaver of the day, ducking and dipping between the sprawling mass of _InGen_ ’s Naval employees.

Jean also discovers that Marco holsters all the attributes of a good _teacher_ : uncomplicated kindness that saturates his smile, endless patience, and an enthusiasm that is never dampened. He often sneaks into Levi’s office and pilfers one of the dusty textbooks from behind the supervisor’s desk, perching with Jean on stools in front of whichever incubator Mikasa is mothering, the pagers spread open on his lap as he teaches Jean how to name each and every set of teeth that nibbles its way out of the egg shells baked in red light.

Jean becomes used to the feeling of Marco’s hands holding his shoulders tight when Mikasa offers him the tweezers to feed the hatchlings – meat scraps, foliage; Jean trains himself how not to tremble with either – and then he tastes the twist in his gut when Marco lets a palm settle in the small of Jean’s back, innocently and uncompromisingly as he guides Jean in feeding a juvenile _t.rex_ , entirely unaware of how just a touch can fray Jean’s nerves so _curiously_.

 _Curiously_ is the operative word. Jean’s not quite sure what to make of the feeling and why it threatens to scorch – he doesn’t feel the same things when Mikasa hugs him goodbye in the evenings, or when Ymir swings an arm around his neck and drags him into a headlock, or when Eren batters him in his canine excitement – but if Marco feels it too, he doesn’t let on, everything concealed behind a quirk in his lips and serenading Spanish that seems to deafen Jean to everything else around him.

The spark caused by brave and inquisitive fingers is nothing, however, to the slow-burn that Jean feels braising the organs within his chest when Mikasa announces on that eighth night of Marco’s visits that her _triceratops_ nest is about to hatch, and Marco all but implodes upon himself.  Jean snorts with laughter at the three pairs of latex gloves Marco rips in his excitement to suit up, and he matches Mikasa when she rolls her eyes at the Marco’s frantic _babble_ of jumbled Spanish and English, too excited to distinguish between the words that come cascading out of mouth when he is shown the incubator.

Jean recalls Mikasa’s words from before: her story of Marco tearing up the first time she hatched _triceratops_ in his company, and Jean keeps a spry glance flickering back and forth between the nest and the corners of Marco’s eyes, wondering if they might gloss up again. If it was anyone else, Jean knows he would laugh – the thought of Eren crying over dinosaurs is enough to threaten brash, abrasive laughter – but he agrees with Mikasa. It’s _touching_ when it comes to Marco, because it’s so damn genuine.

Jean has watched hundreds of eggs hatch in the few weeks that he’s been here, but none of them have made Marco light up in the way that he does. A forked crack splinters through the shell of one of the eggs, a rounded nub of a horn squeezing through the cracks with a raspy cry – Marco’s intake of breath is audible and Jean reckons that the park ranger physically has to hold his own hands back from scooping up the juvenile and cuddling it to his chest. Jean resists making a blunt comment about how the small _triceratops_ are practically _his children_ , and instead lets his gaze fall upon Mikasa’s deft hands as she picks the fragments of shell carefully from the skull of the juvenile that struggles to be free of the stringy membrane.

If they only stayed that small, Jean wouldn’t mind having one in his apartment. A domesticated trike would certainly be a novel one for his already cranky neighbours. There’s something about the bleary eyes, clumsy feet, and podgy tail that’s almost … _cute_.

Jean shakes his head vehemently. Marco has clearly been rubbing off on him.

(And anyway— think of the customs declarations he’d have to sign if he wanted to get one of those back to the US. _No, thank you_.)

“Ven acá, pequeñito,” Marco fusses, dipping his gloved hands into the incubator to encourage the trike to wiggle free. “That’s it. Come on. You’re doing really well.”

The hatchling cries out, the sound croaky and rasping as it coughs over phlegmy membrane caught around its beak. Marco coos, wiping his fingers over the _triceratops_ ’ muzzle and scraping the gloopy, albumin strings away from the infant’s mouth. It tries to nip him – a gut instinct – but is slow and clumsy, its senses still so overwhelmed from tumbling out into such a strange, unnerving world of fluorescent lights and enormous humanoids poking and prodding at it.  

“You’re hungry, hmm?” Marco shushes, accepting the tray of shredded ferns and palm leaves that Mikasa presses into his elbow, “You can’t eat my finger, pequeñito. You wouldn’t like how I taste.”

He steadies the trike with the palm of his hand against its flank and its heaving breaths, and waves a sprig of fern before its beak. The juvenile caws loudly – the sound shriller, louder – but it doesn’t hesitate to chomp down clumsily on the greenery, clasping the twig with its tongue and plucking the thin leaves with its beak.

“Ahí está,” Marco soothes, “¿Qué rico, no? That tastes good?”

The trike searches blindly for more, its beak clicking; Marco chuckles affectionately, grabbing another handful of palm leaves and letting the hatchling pick at the bowl of his hand.

“Remember that I have my eye on you, Marco,” Mikasa remarks dryly, helping another _triceratops_ struggle free of its egg, her purple gloves covered in sticky, red-brown smears. “They’re not yours to take home yet.”

“Not even one?” Marco pouts, wrapping his fingers around the belly of the baby – which squeaks in rasping protest – and manoeuvring it so that he can inspect its eyes against the light, and tuck his thumb into its mouth, prying open its beak to peer at the rows of miniscule teeth that line its jaw.

“Not even one,” Mikasa stresses, lifting the tail of the other trike with the end of her flashlight to examine its glands.

“He’ll have them all the minute you turn your back,” Jean remarks mockingly; Marco berates him with an open-mouthed gasp of playful offense, shocked that Jean would ever _dare_ make such a suggestion at his expense. Jean doesn’t need to remind Marco that he _knows_ Jean is right, settling with a teasing nudge of his elbow against Marco’s arm, easing his goggles down from his hairline as he leans over the incubator, grinning as the _triceratops_ shies away from his shadow.

“When _can_ I take them?” Marco pries hopefully, “Maybe this time we don’t give them to Connie and Sasha, yes? We have the facilities to care for the baby ones at the unit, and I would very much like to have a turn.”

“We’ll see,” Mikasa says, “I think we’ll keep them inside this week, however, considering the weather—”

She meets two blank stares and rolls her eyes, her shoulders slumping.

“No-one checks the weather forecast?” she sighs, “There’s a storm heading for the mainland, and it’ll probably hit within a few days. I reckon it’s probably better if we keep the juveniles in the hatchery until it passes. I doubt they’ll appreciate being outdoors in those sorts of conditions.”

 

* * *

 

Mikasa is right about the storm. It hits the island two days later, starting as a wind that whips Jean’s sunglasses from his head as he’s walking with Eren and Ymir to the restaurant that night. They both laugh at him – and it only gets more raucous and patronising the more they drink over dinner – when Jean remarks on the reason Hammond’s first park went _tits-up_ was because of a storm taking down the fences. Jean supposes he’s meant to be reassured when Eren slaps him heartily on the back, and tells him that they’ve come a long way since mere electrified fences and paper-weight walls. He says there’s nothing to worry about.

Jean _does_ question the validity of Eren’s reassurance when the full force of the wind and the sheets of jack-hammer rain slam into the side of their hotel in the early hours of that morning – but he’s relieved to see that everything still stands and there are no man-eating dinosaurs on the street when he stirs for breakfast the next day.

The wind doesn’t die down, buffeting Jean along the promenade as he scuttles towards the lab, praying that one tidal gust doesn’t swoop in and lift him off his feet – because he doesn’t fancy being flung into the _mosasaurus_ tank and being left for fish bait – but he makes it to his work bench just a little windswept and disoriented.

The rain hammers on the roof of the visitor’s centre all afternoon, the sound an endless and unrelenting snare drum. The air inside the lab is more humid than usual, a suspension of water and weight that makes everything all the more unbearable: people are crankier, angry that lab coat sleeves cannot be rolled up to relieve the heat, and sweating buckets through the collars of their shirts. It doesn’t help the taught tether in Jean’s mind that the mass spectrometer is playing up, some calibration error undoubtedly the result of someone slacking in their job due to the sticky conditions and desire to lay down beneath an air conditioner and not move. Jean wouldn’t blame them – if it weren’t for the fact he spends hours recalibrating the unit, running blank sample after blank sample, whilst his shirt glues itself to his skin and Levi is remorseless in snapping orders, his grumpy tirade fuelled by the clammy heat.

The laboratory empties earlier than usually, the other technicians all too eager to hang up their coats and their specs and flee to the sweet sanctuary of a cold shower or a dip in the employee pool or a drink on the rocks – anywhere but chained to stuffy equipment and a wheezing, overworked printer spitting out data tables.

Jean is fortunate in that the flurry of people out the door takes most of the unbearable heat with it. The quiet in itself feels cooler, less demanding, and he’s able to meander around the lab in peace as he waits for his sample to finish spinning on the rotary evaporator. He makes more progress in the two hours after clock-out than the entire day, and the waterfall hush of the rain by itself, not interrupted by the general clamour of coarse chatter and ten spectrometers working at once, becomes soothing.

The wind is not so soothing – and Jean is startled more than once by cymbal-like crashes, and genuinely fears that the building is being stripped to pieces by the passing hurricane. His round-bottom flask comes incredibly close to being shattered on the floor when he unclips it from the evaporator and the storm bellows into the side of the building, shaking the doors and all the glassware in the cupboards, and thrusting Jean’s heart up into his throat.

He keeps working, however, for two reasons: Levi will have his internal organs liquidised and turned into a smoothie for a _t.rex_ if he doesn’t sequence this base code by tomorrow, and he’s not overtly fond of the thought of making the dash from the laboratory doors to the hotel in the beating rain. Maybe it will pass before too long. There’s only so much water the clouds can dump on him, he reasons.

Nine o’clock comes and goes, with Mikasa dropping by on her way out of the hatchery, buttoned up to her chin in an oversized anorak and wishing Jean good luck with his research, and advising him to get home safely. Jean returns the sentiments, reminding her not to get swept out to sea, and he spares her a curt wave over his shoulder as she trudges out to brave the elements.

The lights flickering in the extraction lab give Jean the spooks, and he prays that the power doesn’t go out – he doesn’t want to be left alone in the dark, and he doesn’t want to be the one having to reboot and retune all the spectrometers frazzled by a prevalent power cut.

He drags a stool up to his computer, his desktop overloaded with windows of overlapping spectra, which draws out a dying sigh from his lips as he slumps forward, resting his chin in his hands as the screen begins to blur. He rubs his eyes sleepily, the numbers refocussing and the thunder in the distance still rumbling. He figures it’s going to be a _very_ long night.

He doesn’t know how long he zones out, staring at the peaks of his mass spectra – hell, he doesn’t even _realise_ that his mind has stopped whirring and shut down – until he’s frightened by a loud, rattling _thump_ against the glass door. He springs awake, every hair on his head hackled and every blood vessel in his body electrified, his mind crashing into all sorts of thoughts of the storm finally having torn a hole in the roof of the laboratory – but the thump happens again, and he quickly realises it’s a frantic knock.

Marco. He’s drenched to the bone, dark hair plastered to his forehead, water rolling in steams down the sides of his nose and along his forearms as he raises his palm and slams his hand against the glass once more. His uniform is soaked dark and saturated, the stiff fabric of his shorts clinging in wrinkles against his thighs, and his boots are sodden with clumps of thick, viscous mud.

He doesn’t bare a smile, and it causes Jean’s own automatic one to sour in a second. There’s distress in Marco’s eyes and it makes Jean’s blood turn cold, even though he’s the one who’s dry and baking in the sweltering, humid heat.

He’s on his feet before he knows it, slipping his lanyard from his neck and swiping his card against the keypad; the door clicks open, and Marco all but collapses through the open gap, white exertion on his face hidden by the raindrops that stream freely across his freckled skin.

“A-are … are you alright?” Jean splutters, reaching out to touch Marco’s shoulder, but thinking twice about it. He curls his fingers into his palm, unsure, and withdraws his fist. “Were you out there?”

It’s a dumb question – but whilst the answer is blindingly obvious, Marco does not crack a smile. That in itself worries Jean more than he would like.

It takes a moment for Marco to catch his breath, carding his fingers through the water-logged strands of his hair that are glued to his brow, and slathering them back against the crown of his head. For Jean, it feels far longer than a moment, and he is acutely aware of the way his heartbeat mimics the crash of thunder overhead.

“ _Marco_ —”

“One of the _triceratops_ , she is sick,” Marco breathes, expelling the mangle of words as figurative vomit. Jean has never seen him so pale. “Very sick. I don’t— she might _die_.”

There are muddy footprints on the floor, swimming in the splattering of rainwater that drips persistently from his clothes, dissolving the dirt. The mud is smeared up the insides of Marco’s naked calves too – black, gruel-like sprays that suggest he’s run a very long way, very fast.

 “Wh—” Jean starts, bewildered, but it is clear the man before him is shaking. He knows his pandering and questions won’t help the matter – but he knows how to work under pressure. Jean doesn’t know why Marco would run here, but _here_ he is. “Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

Marco nods, swallowing back a lump in his throat. His dark eyes are rabbit-wide, adrenaline and riling panic coursing through his pupils.

“She ate something poisonous. I know she did. Pero, no sé lo que era, así que no sé— _lo siento_. I don’t know what it was, so I don’t know what medicine I should give her, and I— _mierda_.”

Marco palms his eyes roughly, almost tearful. Jean sees the cracks forming and the pieces crumbling from Marco’s so happy and optimistic countenance, and he only wishes he were brave enough to catch them so that they might not hit the floor. Instead, he’s left to flounder in front of Marco as he sniffs loudly and fights to rein in his feelings.

“D-did you call the vet? Surely … surely he could do something—”

“Sí, yes, I— I did,” Marco croaks, “But, with the storm— he’s on the other side of the island and he said he doesn’t think he can make it across in less than an hour because the road is blocked by— _por un árbol o lo que sea_ , and I— I don’t know if she has that long. She is really sick, Jean.” 

Jean’s eyes drill into Marco’s hand as it moves to his breast pocket – soaked and dripping wet – and he pulls out two corked vials, both covered in dirty, frantic fingerprints. He is hesitant to hold them out to Jean, but the desperation in the tremble in his hand and the fragile line of his mouth is far more clear-cut.

“If I know— if I know what she ate,” he rasps, “I can give her the medicine that she needs. And I thought, maybe you could— with your spectrometer—”

Jean doesn’t let him finish his sentence, snatching the phials from Marco’s rain-wet hand and spinning on his heels as he knocks his goggles down from his hairline and onto the bridge of his nose. It looks like blood and stool that he’s been given – Jean flicks the rubber bung from the vial of blood with his thumb, scattering the other phial and the stopper on the counter of his word bench as he grabs a pipette and makes a swift beeline for the NMR machine.

He resents the languid pace of the spectrometer more than ever, but it’s not him who paces relentlessly back and forth in front of it, traipsing a circle of muddy footprints across the white floor of the lab. Marco doesn’t say anything, his mouth tightly clamped shut, and only looking up every time something beeps, momentary hope in his eyes that their might be a result and an answer.

Jean throws samples around left, right, and centre. He cancels the run of his experiment on the mass spectrometer, replacing it with another phial of _triceratops_ blood, practically slamming his fist down on the keyboard to start the run.

If he maybe knew more about the diet of a _triceratops_ , maybe he’d have an idea of what to look for – but he’s driving blind, his wipers slamming back and forth across the windshield as he tries to beat back the rain. He wishes he’d pandered to Eren more; paid attention to his drunken rambles and obnoxious tales; asked him more _questions_. Maybe he could be more help than just jamming buttons and waiting for the machines to spit him out an answer that he only prays will make sense.

Marco pulls a stool up to Jean’s workbench, the screech of the metal legs across the floor raking up Jean’s spine and making him shiver. He watches helplessly as Marco bows his head over the table, pressing his forehead to the cool surface and lacing his fingers over the nape of his neck, willing himself to pour all his worries into the tapping of his foot against the bars of the stool.

Marco doesn’t look up when the printer spits out the mess of jagged lines and peaks that Jean would call a spectra, and Jean is glad of it, because he knows his face betrays him when he realises the molecule he’s looking for is more complicated that he might have hoped.

“Do you know what it is?” Marco murmurs weakly, having tilted his head so that his ear is now flat against the work bench. The panic has degraded to despondency, and Jean is sure it pains Marco to feel just as much as it hurts Jean to see.

Jean frowns at the data in his fist, eyes roaming over the lines on the page he’s spent years of his life training himself how to read. He wishes that it was that easy.

“No,” he murmurs, and Marco’s face falls as he sucks in his lower lip. “But I know where to start. It’s, uh— there’s a type of limonoid in the blood, which is probably the cause of the toxicity, I think— not that it really matters what I call it, geez, but— I’ll figure it out. I got this.”

Even just the façade of determination and self-belief is enough for Jean to feel like he can square his shoulders and swarm into Levi’s office, focussed obsoletely on the bookcases that line the back wall. He grabs four or five from the top shelf and spreads them over Levi’s desk, shoving papers to the side and knocking over the colour-coordinated pencil pot – but it can all be dealt with later. He knows what’s in the molecule, he knows which elements, he knows which functional groups – and now if only he can understand how they all join together like a jigsaw puzzle, he’ll know what the poison is. He can prove himself. He can save that _triceratops_ ’ life. He can help Marco.

 _Enol ether, acetal, hemiacetal, carboxylic esters, a tetrasubstituted oxriane_ — Jean recites the components in his head like a spell, the chemistry its own language as he leafs through page after page of textbook, hoping, praying, _wanting_ —

He stops abruptly on page two-hundred-and-two of an encyclopaedia of the chemistry of indigenous tropical plants, a spidery sprawl of hydrogen, oxygens, and carbons catching his eye just above his thumb.

 _Azadirachtin_ , reads the caption below the molecule. Jean doesn’t know it, but he was right about its classification. _Found in chinaberry and Indian lilac amongst other tropical species. Leaves and fruit known to be toxic._

“Fuck,” he swears under his breath – but it’s entirely relief on his part, his eyes going wide as his fingers dance over the image of the purple-white flowering plant. He repeats himself a little louder, and then shouts, “Fuck! Marco, I think I got something that matches— I mean, I got it, I got it!”

He hears Marco stool screech and topple to the floor with a cringing clash, and then Marco is at the door to Levi’s office, his eyes eclipsing and his fingers digging into the doorframe with blunt nails. Jean gestures him over with a hurried flick of his wrist, jabbing with his fingers at the page in the textbook.

“Here, look—” he gushes, “This … this molecule— this matches the data. It’s got the same peaks with what I recorded, so I— I think this could be it. Is there any of this plant in the paddock?”

Marco frowns at the page, sweeping his strands of damp hair away from his face.

“La lila india,” he mutters, “Sí, claro, but— but they know not to eat it, so I don’t understand—”

“You said it was the juvenile, right? The same one that you had to keep in?” Jean prompts, “Is there a chance it could, like … not know that it’s poisonous? If the herd never taught it what it should and shouldn’t eat?”

Jean can only describe the look that Marco burns him with as being seen for the very time. There’s something epiphanic about it, and it causes the breath in Jean’s throat to hitch and turn to plumes of smoke.

“Are you sure?” Marco hushes, his voice low and rasping as he prods the page in the book hard, “Are you sure this is what it is? This is what is making her sick?”

Jean gulps and nods once.

“Positive.” He’s not positive. Not completely. But he wills it to be enough, because he can’t bare the look on Marco’s face. “Do you … do you know how to help her? The baby?”

Marco presses his lips into a tight line, and pauses long enough for Jean’s stomach to turn with the fret that it’s not enough, and his work has been for nothing—

“I do,” Marco says severely, and the fear in Jean’s gut pings back elastically, almost winding him. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing wants to come out. “Jean, I have to go.”

Marco leaps away from the desk, his strides swift and determined as he flies towards the door, fingers expertly unrolling his drenched cuffs from his elbows— but then he stops. He twists back to face Jean with hesitation on his face, as well as the spurt of something more – and he’s sees the way Jean wrings his hands involuntarily, his posture hunched behind Levi’s desk, and his eyes wide, hopeful, anxious, a whole plethora of convoluted emotions.

Marco turns on his heels, his muddy boots squeaking on the clean floors, and Jean knows that Levi is going to go to town on them tomorrow for the state of his office – but whilst Jean knows that the mess is there, he can’t bring himself to really see it – not when Marco stops in front of him and grabs his hand, shaking it once. His grip is tight, nearer desperate than anything, but it is also warm.

“Thank you, Jean,” he says softly. “Thank you.” He leans forward, and Jean can’t help but automatically recoil; Marco’s lips find his cheek nonetheless, a quick peck where the colour blooms brilliantly in Jean’s face.

And then he’s gone like a flash, thundering out into the storm, and Jean is thoroughly buffeted in the wake of both.

 

* * *

 

Jean is not sure how long he stands in Levi’s office, completely dumbfounded. Minutes, hours, he doesn’t know – he barely even hears the rampant rumble of the storm beating its case against the building – and the only thing that drags him back down to earth is the thought that Levi will have his guts for garters if he doesn’t clean up.

He stacks all the textbooks back on the shelf, hoping that he remembered the correct order for whatever system Levi has meticulously devised to store his research library, and comes up a loss when he goes searching for a mop and bucket for the floor, resigning himself to scrubbing at the muddy footprints with a fistful of paper towels on his hands and knees.

His research doesn’t get finished that night, the sample he was planning to run through the mass spectrometer left abandoned in his fume hood, stuffed with cotton wool and covered in aluminium foil in the naïve hope that it might still be salvageable in the morning.

He’s sort of thankful he’s so _out of it_ , because he doesn’t realise how drenched to the bone he is when he makes a run for it from the lab, until he stumbles through the door of his hotel room, having braved the rain and the wind, despite his skin being numb enough not to feel its chafe.

He strips his wet clothes, flinging them onto the floor with a sodden slap against the carpets, and heads for the shower – and it’s only when he passes himself in the mirror of his bathroom that he stops, and his fingers grace the apple of his cheek, and he remembers hotly.

Jean makes sure to twist the dial on his shower cold, despite the chill rooted in his bones from the storm.

There’s still a scintillating simmer in his cheeks and a wriggle in his gut that he cannot placate when he slinks out of the shower, bundling up in his fluffiest robe and grabbing the telephone from his coffee table, balancing the receiver between his shoulder and his ear as he fiddles with the television remote, sifting through the channels. He spares no expense in ordering two large pizzas from room service for himself, and slumps gladly onto the stiff cushions of his couch, tucking his feet beneath himself and resting his head on the sofa arm, fingers ghosting over his cheek again as he wonders if Marco made it back to the compound in time.

 

* * *

 

Jean gorges on pizza until he can’t move, an ugly groan oozing from his throat as he clutches his stomach and flops sideways onto the couch cushions, feeling sluggish and bloated. He doubts he’ll be able to sleep – not with the way the rain pounds against the glass of his windows, and the way, simultaneously, he feels like his heart wants to fidget its way out of his chest, yet his stomach cannot stand the thought of moving, _ever_.

The storm interferes with his TV channels, sending CNN into a whir of static, and whatever Costa Rican telenovela is being shown on the next channel is barely legible, skipping in and out of white noise. Jean flicks over to the shitty Park guides, the only channel not somersaulting over bouts of no signal and jittering fits of noise, and settles back to watch the interactive tour of what Jurassic World will be in less than two weeks now.

There’s only so much he can watch – only so much grating voiceover he can listen to – before he’s thinking about the juvenile _triceratops_ , completely oblivious to what might be scrolling across the television screen.

Four weeks ago, Jean knows he wouldn’t have cared. Jean knows he would’ve sided with the people shrugging their shoulders and offhandedly admitting that _exhibits can be replaced_. Jean knows the words that would have sifted through his head would have been something along the lines of: _animals get sick all the time. What’s new?_

Jean didn’t realise until now how truly _swiftly_ a personal can change. He changed.

God, he hopes – hell, he _prays_ – that Marco made it back through the storm in time. Thoughts of his Jeep getting stuck in swamping mud, or the rain thundering too heavy against his windshield and preventing him from driving, swallow Jean up, even when he presses the heel of his palm against his eyes and wills himself to hope for the best.

He never expected to care so much, but if anything, this place has done more than enough to surprise him.

 

* * *

 

It’s gone midnight when Jean wakes with a jolt and an unattractive snort, striking his head on the sofa arm when he forgets where he’s been dozing. His throat feels dry, stale with the flavour of pizza he needs to wash down, and his head is muggy, clouded with a dull sort of ache. He drags himself up into a sitting positon, legs and arms cramping from being wrapped up in a foetal position, and runs a disoriented hand through his hair, dragging the still-damp strands up on end.

He’s not sure what woke him – maybe a loud crash of thunder, because the storm still batters outside, pelts of rain flushing down the glass that he hasn’t drawn the curtains across.

He groans, stretching his stiff arms above his head, and is just about to gracelessly roll off the side of the sofa and drag himself to bed when there’s a hollow knock on his door.

He squints for a moment at the door, and then at his watch, double-checking the time, but it really is late.

 _Wrong room_ , he assumes, _or Ymir and Eren here to bug him because they can’t sleep._

The person knocks again, the noise muffled by the wood. It doesn’t sound as aggressive as if it were one of the palaeontologists so eager to get under Jean’s skin.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Jean mutters, tripping over his own feet as he slithers from the sofa. He bumps his forehead against the peephole, peeking out into the hallway – but there’s nothing but flickering hotel lights bathing the corridor and its geometric carpet in an artificial, yellow light.

Jean frowns, turning the lock and tugging the door ajar, poking his head out into the corridor to see if the knocking had just been a figment of his imagination and a sign that he really needs to go to bed.

There’s no-one standing in front of his door, and Ymir’s and Eren’s rooms are firmly shut across the way; but when Jean looks right, eyes following the vanishing length of the hallway, he falls upon a familiar back sneaking away.

Jean’s eyes cling to the rain-soaked uniform stretched with wrinkled across shoulder blades, and the hunched shoulders, and the hands stuffed deep into sodden pockets, and then he remembers how to call out, his voice hoarse from uncomfortable sleep.

“M-Marco!” he says, and the man retreating down the hallway stops. “Hey, wait up—!”

Marco turns at the sound of his name, humble surprise fluttering deftly across his features. There are heavy bags strung purple beneath his eyes, blended into his dark skin, but the moment his exhausted eyes meet Jean’s plainly curious ones, his lips beg a quiet smile.

“Hey,” he says softly. Rainwater drips from the ends of his hair, but his uniform is too damp to absorb any more water and become any darker. “Were you sleeping?”

Jean nudges the door open with his elbow, hanging out into the hallway as Marco retraces his steps. His boots squelch on the carpet and Jean can see goose pimples raising bumps in his skin; Marco sniffs loudly with the cold.

“No— well, yes, technically,” Jean garbles, unable to tear his eyes away from the crinkled collar of Marco’s uniform, undone at the top button to reveal flushed and freezing skin. “But, I— is it okay? Did the baby—?”

Marco slides his hands from his pockets, sweeping his fingers through his wet hair, but his smile doesn’t fade. Jean would call the way he shrugs his shoulders meek, if more than his fair share of weary.

“She’s okay,” Marco admits, unable to fully rein in the relief in his voice, “I got to her in time. If she survives the night with what I gave her, I think she’ll be okay. Someone is staying the night to watch her.” Marco scuffs his foot on the floor, soaking a wet streak into the carpet. “It’s all thanks to you, Jean.”

Jean blanches, heat convecting into his face as he stares at the floor, training his eyes on the mud caked to Marco’s soles.

“You’re the one with the medical knowledge,” Jean confesses, “You actually did the saving, I just—”

Marco barks a laugh, moving to buff Jean in the arm with his fist – but he lets his hand drop before his knuckles graze the shoulder of Jean’s bathrobe.

“Don’t say that,” he murmurs. The silence that prevails is heavy, thick with the rain and viscous with the fact that neither of them can meet each other’s eyes. Jean bites down on the inside of his cheek, his fingers tugging the collar of his robe tighter across his chest. He can’t help but wonder why Marco is here.

“You … you wanna come in?” Jean mumbles, nodding quietly at the state of Marco’s uniform and the chills that shiver beneath his skin. “I’ve got some pizza.”

“That … would be nice.”

 

* * *

 

Marco sneezes violently the moment he steps over the threshold, and it shatters the silence opaquely – Jean can’t help but laugh, leaning back against the door as he shuts it behind them, clutching his stomach as Marco pouts, doing his utmost to be the epitome of a wet puppy dog.

Jean dips into the bathroom to grab a towel as Marco gravitates towards the open pizza boxes on the coffee table, strung along by a growling stomach and dinner-plate eyes as he locks onto the remaining slices of pepperoni.

He huffs loudly when Jean flings the towel over his wet hair, but steals a slice and munches on it hungrily, strings of cheese stretching from his lips before he begins to massage the towel into his head.

Jean slumps back onto the couch, nudging Marco in the back of the knee with his foot as Marco steals another slice of pizza before he even finishes the first one, shovelling it into his mouth like his life might depend on it, barely pausing to chew.

“You’re gonna get cramp if you eat that quickly,” Jean muses, patting the cushion next to him until Marco decides to perch on the edge. “They not feed you good up at the ranger station?”

“I haven’t eaten all day,” Marco mumbles around a mouthful of pizza, mangling his words. The towel slips from his head, falling around his neck, and Jean resists the obtrusive desire to knead the fluffy fabric in Marco’s shoulder blades to try and suck some of the water out of his clothes. He folds his arms instead, pressing his hands tightly into his armpits to prevent his fingers from fidgeting. “I didn’t realise I was hungry until I came here. Too busy to think about food.”

He licks his fingers of tomato sauce and stringy cheese, the flash of pink tongue swiping a thick stripe up the side of each digit before he pops them individually into his mouth. Jean tries not to look – tries not to hear the quiet _pop_ or dwell on the curl of Marco’s tongue – but he’s weak. He can’t help but flounder with a sideways glance.

He knows Marco notices, because the next bite of the pizza he takes is slower, taking care to chew thoroughly but unobtrusively, swallowing the mouthful as if suddenly self-conscious and shy. Jean doesn’t know where to look, the bob of Marco’s throat too distracting when it shouldn’t be – _because why_ should _it be?_ He should be able to tear his eyes away from the dip of Marco’s Adam’s apple, but there’s something in Marco’s skin and the waterfall of freckles that is cement to Jean. He pulls at his feet and at his stare, but they don’t quite budge.

Marco throws the pizza crust back into the box, but doesn’t lick his hands this time, running his thumbs across the pads of his crumb-covered fingers and mulling over trained thought.

“How, uh—” Marco begins slowly, “How long until you go … home? To America?”

The question takes Jean by surprise; he pulls his legs up onto the couch, curling in on himself as he makes sure his calves are draped protectively with dressing gown. He rests his chin on his knees.

“Four weeks, give or take,” he admits, “Just less, actually. ‘S only an eight week placement.”

Marco’s face falls, and he’s unable to catch himself.

“Oh. _Claro_.”  When an uncomfortable, dense sort of silence prevails, Marco raises his voice again. “Are you … looking forward to going home?”

Jean buries his nose in the fuzz of his bathrobe, gently biting into it but not feeling the pressure of his teeth against his skin through the fluffy fabric. Marco continues to fiddle with his hands, not quite confident enough to spare Jean a more knowing glance.

“I suppose,” Jean mumbles, “I miss my apartment, I guess. My bed. Even my ratty couch. And it’ll be nice to be back in my own lab where I don’t feel so damn rushed all the time.” He sits up a little straighter when his lips curl into a wry smile, and he adds, “And I’m not gonna complain to be back I a city where cats and dogs are the biggest thing I’m likely to meet on the street, y’know?”

Marco smiles – yet it’s one of those fake smiles that is so often practiced by the suited-and-booted, and it doesn’t dapple his eyes. But he does lean back, slumping into the sofa cushions with a deflating huff and a muffled thud, letting his head loll back against the spine. He turns himself just enough to be able to see Jean, whatever feeling cradled in his eyes being dark and unreadable to Jean, and a far cry from the sprightly humour that so usually rests there.

“Anyone waiting for you?” he asks softly, lips barely moving, “Family? Friends? A … girlfriend?”

“’S just me,” Jean says, “Family are out-of-state, and I don’t think anyone would want to live in my apartment with me. It’s a bit of a bombsite, and there’s damp in the kitchen, and— yeah. Just me.”

A pendulum of poignancy remains suspended in the air: a question that Marco didn’t quite ask, but the insinuation is not necessarily lost to nothing. Jean wonders what he really wants to know – and at the same time wishes he, himself, could just _ask_ , and not seem crass.

(He doesn’t _just ask_ , of course, because he’s far too scared of pushing the _friend_ he’s made away. And he’s probably too scared to address the addiction to a feeling that has started to bloom within his chest without him really realising. He doesn’t know how to name it.)

Marco speaks before Jean can figure out what he wants to say – if that’s anything at all.

“Can I ask you a weird question?”

Jean only nods. Marco scrunches his lips up into a pucker, moving air around in the hollow of his lean cheeks.

“Can I, _uhm_ — have your phone number?”

Jean knows he physically _perks up_ at the question, his eyes fluttering wide and his mouth falling open in mild surprise.

“My phone number?” he repeats numbly; Marco nods.

“Sí, _yes_. If that is … okay. That would be nice, I think. Maybe it would make it easier to … to meet up, before you go home.”

Jean is unused to it happening _this way_. He’s used to scrawling his number on napkins, hoping for the best, but then being bitterly disappointed by the first date and the pressure for more. He’s not used to the way Marco tries to keep his _earnestness_ in check, but fails. It slips through the cracks of the indifferent, candidly-casual mask he tries to wear.

No matter. Jean feels the flutter in his chest enough for both of them.

“’Course,” he breathes, his lips moving before his head has caught up, out-racing all the ministrations and over-thinking that battles for first place. He rises from the couch, all stiff limbs and rigid bones, and thumbs clumsily towards the door to his bedroom. “Yeah, I mean, I’ll— I’ll just go get my phone, so you can— you can— y’know. Number. Yes. Right.”

Jean has never really been one to _scuttle_ , but there is no other way to describe the way he darts towards his bedroom, knowing Marco’s eyes linger on his back as he disappears behind the door. He regrets flinging his rain-damp clothes across the room and he slaps his hands crudely against the wet fabric, searching for the feeling of his phone drowned within them.

 _Did he have his phone in his back pocket? Was it in his lab coat?_ Jean curses frustrated beneath his breath, slinging his sodden dress shirt onto the bed with a gross squelch.  He really hopes he didn’t forget it on his work bench, because he’s already done that more than once over this past month.

His phone must have slipped from the pockets of his pants when he stripped himself of them, and been kicked under the bed on his way to warm himself in the shower – because that’s where Jean finds it, still with the speckling of rain drops on its screen. He mutters under his breath as he hauls himself up from his hands and knees, clutching his battered Samsung tightly in his fist and hoping Marco doesn’t walk in when he’s all but got his nose under his mattress.

(He doesn’t. Thankfully.)

Jean scampers back into the living room with an exuberant – and probably shameful – skip in his step, which evaporates with a sigh when he hears light storing rolling over the back of the couch in waves, Marco’s head having slipped from the spine of the sofa to rest awkwardly in the crook of his arm.

Having someone ask for his phone number and then fall asleep on him is a new one. It’s not the _worst_ one, Jean clarifies, which is quite a depressing thought in itself, but he pushes it from his mind as he rounds the side of the couch and sees that Marco’s cell phone rests on the coffee table.

He shouldn’t be surprised that Marco’s lock screen is _triceratops_ -related, but it’s his home screen that draws a wry smile onto Jean’s lips as his thumb hovers just above the contacts icon. It’s a blurry shot, obscured in the top corner by someone’s thumb – probably Connie’s, if Jean has learned anything of the nursery handler – and is of an ecstatic Sasha and beaming Marco beneath the _Welcome to Jurassic World_ banner that lauds across the jetty of the ferry port.

Jean wonders if the photo is from their very first day on the island – but it’s difficult to tell, because the enthusiasm in Marco’s eyes still radiates with the same novelty as any other time Jean has seen him handle the juvenile trikes or boast about his grand knowledge of herbivores. It’s hard for Jean to imagine how much more excited Marco could have been upon his first encounter with the dinosaurs he loves and adores so much.

Jean enters his contact details into Marco’s phone quickly, and then sends himself a text message, his fingers fumbling on the old-school buttons that click beneath the pads of his fingers. His own phone bleeps, and he is meticulous in making sure Marco’s number saves to his SIM card.

Marco grumbles in his sleep and wrinkles his nose – and it’s not an attractive noise by any stretch of the imagination, but it makes Jean chuckle as he shakes his head despairingly. With his legs folded awkwardly and his hips at a weird angle to the floor, Jean can’t help but think Marco’s choice of sleeping position looks decidedly uncomfortable – but thoughts of him having run back and forth between the lab and his base, and the sheer exhaustion caused by his panic, are reason enough in Jean’s mind for his passing out in an instant.

Marco’s boots are still caked in cracking mud, and Jean does at least consider unlacing them and removing them from Marco’s feet for a moment – until deciding that some things are a little too borderline creeper. Jean settles for fetching one of the other, tent-like towels from his ensuite, and bundles it up into a pillow shape to ease beneath Marco’s head and arm, before making sure the thermostat is turned up warm enough to give him a good night’s sleep – and hopefully dry the uniform that sticks to every contour of his body before he wakes.

Jean regrets napping earlier. When he slips into bed, curling up on the very edge of his mattress, he finds his eyes don’t particularly want to close and his head is a jumble of unstrung words. Sleep doesn’t come easy to him that night.

He tries not to dwell on the fact that it’s probably down to the other man dozing in the room next door to him.

 

* * *

 

It’s late when Jean wakes – and he would rue the fact he forgot to set his alarm last night and is now late for work, if his legs didn’t feel like lead and every joint in his body rusted over. He doesn’t even know why. Shuffling around the lab is no marathon running.

He rolls over into the spare pillow on his bed with a grumble, fingers fisting in the downy feathers and soft linen as he crumples the pillow against his nose, stretching his toes beneath the covers until it feels like he might snap every tendon in his body.

He burrows beneath his duvet, drawing the billowy, white fabric up and over his head as he shields himself from the streams of sunlight that slice through his blinds – the storm has passed, and left in its wake the feign of innocence as if it were never there.

Jean wonders for a moment what the damage will be like – _if_ there will be any damage left to mention, given the fact he doesn’t doubt that park operations will have been up and employed the moment the last drop of rain fell, to ensure all the roofs were still roofs and all the windows unbroken.

Jean’s bed seems like a far better option than going outside, considering the cosiness of his blankets and the purr of the air conditioning in the corner of the room that could make him forget that beyond his window is a tropical climate. He still has a good few hours of unperturbed sleeping to enjoy before Levi comes rattling at his door and dragging him from the mattress by his ankles—

Jean remembers Marco like a fork of lightning that has dithered and dallied too long, and been left behind by the storm. He bolts upright in bed, almost giving himself whiplash with how his neck and spine complain jarringly.

He almost trips over with the speed at which he tumbles out of bed and dances into a fresh pair of boxers, jiggling his work pants up and over his bony hips and wrestling with the catch as he pushes his bedroom door open with his shoulder, expecting— well, not entirely sure _what_ he’s expecting.

He is met by silence, and the slightly stale whiff of cold pizza. There’s no-one napping on the couch, all sprawled limbs and quiet snores; and there’s no-one padding around his kitchenette with sleepy yawns and a pot of jet-black coffee in one hand.

Just silence.

Jean feels his heart fall, landing with a wet splosh in a hollow he wasn’t aware had been excavated inside his chest and left to fill with storm run-off. He rocks back against the frame of the door, shoving his hands deep into his pockets as he feels a chill run over his bare chest.

He was allowed to expect _something_ , wasn’t he?

He shuffles back to his room to finish dressing for the day, fumbling with the buttons on his shirt and grumbling to himself when his cuffs keep slipping down like paws over his thin hands. He dawdles in his routine: brushing his teeth with twice as many strokes, and making sure to get every microscopic hair on his chin with the blade of his razor. He drinks two cups of coffee – black and bitter and almost tear-jerking with how the acridity makes him grimace – and washes up his mug and the lime scale in the kettle before he forces himself to wander over to the couch.

He realises he should’ve done so far sooner, in that the moment that he rounds the arm of the sofa, he sees the bath towel folded neatly into a precise square on the cushions, crowned with a note of scrap paper, through which the ink of a biro bleeds.

Jean almost tears the paper in his haste to grab it, unfolding it with brutish, clumsy fingers that shake just a little too embarrassingly for his liking. Marco’s handwriting is cursive and fluid, his letters elaborate with extra curls that make his _r_ ’s look like _n_ ’s.

_Sorry I had to leave so early. I had a shift at the pen and I wanted to check on the juvenile. I hope you slept very well. Thank you for your couch – it was surprisingly comfortable._

Jean wonders if it was him who was the deep sleeper, or if it was Marco who had woken at the crack of sparrows and crept around the room on his tiptoes, ruing making any noise to wake Jean in the neighbouring room – probably a combination of both, if he’s honest, and he regrets feeling disappointment for not seeing Marco go, when in fact Jean was the one being kindly offered a few extra winks of undisturbed rest.

Jean doesn’t deliberate for very long – five minutes at most, which he truthfully spends carefully folding Marco’s note back up and deciding where to put it, be that the kitchen counter, or his bedside table, or his pocket – and it leads him to dial Levi’s number into his cell phone and call in sick for the day.

 _The storm_ , he says flippantly. _He caught a cold from being so drenched by the rain._

It’s all nonsense, of course, but he feigns a cough down the line for good measure and hears Levi grumble acceptingly, before hanging up without any form of goodbye or get well. (Jean wonders if he owes Mikasa an apology for the horrific mood that their boss is bound to be in all day, but he figures those are things that he can leave for another time.)

 

* * *

 

It takes Jean an elevator ride, a flight of stairs, and a good few steps out into the blaring, beguiling sunlight to realise that he does not have access to a car to make the most of his _sick day_. Thoughts of bouncing along the dirt tracks and climbing up the meandering roads into the hills towards the _triceratops’_ territory had guided him blindly enough through the lobby of the hotel, an uncharacteristic spring in his usually sour step – but it’s the instant dewing of sweat on the nape of his neck that causes him to stop in the middle of the concrete-paved promenade and realise that he was never deemed important enough an employee to be granted a fancy Mercedes, let alone a wheezing, paint-chipped safari Jeep.

Jean huffs loudly with the dampening of his plans to return the favour of a surprise to Marco – and he knows implicitly the sound of his own weak-willed conscience that shrugs its shoulders and suggests a day spent in bed actually pampering himself wouldn’t sound half bad at all – but at the same time, his eyes fall on the overgrown sails of green ferns and the bold-coloured archway that leads towards Masrani’s glorified _petting zoo_.

He can only imagine how bustling and how chaotic the park will be, come opening day: thoughts of young children abandoned by irresponsible parents tugging on the tails of the baby _triceratops_ and _stegosaurus_ makes him grimace at the thought. He’s never been a fan of wailing children and sticky hands, but he realises, as he creeps along the pebble-lined path, that the thought of the juveniles, so considerately reared by Mikasa and the others, being pestered so nocuously bothers him more than he might have once admitted.

Jean’s skin prickles with the shrill caw of a dinosaur he cannot place, and then the bubbling laughter of voices he can, as he rounds the corner of the path that opens up into a dusty pen, fenced by loose ropes. He recognises Sasha’s swinging ponytail almost immediately, his eyes falling on her as she fusses over a stout _apatosaurus_ orphan when tries to nibble at her long hair. Connie stands some way off, a crude saddle slung over his shoulder, and bright laughter on his broad lips as he does nothing to help.

“I’m not food, sweetheart!” Sasha giggles, flicking her hair over her shoulder as best she can – although the long-necked juvenile is neither deterred nor reprimanded, chomping at the collar of her khaki uniform instead. “As much as I wish I was a tree, I— hey, no teeth, okay?!”

Jean coughs gently into his fist, attracting Connie’s attention from where he’s let his eyes rest easily on Sasha’s back. The _apatosaurus_ , on the other hand, pays him no heed.

“Jean!” Connie grins, dropping the saddle onto the sandy floor with a mushrooming puff of ochre dust as he throws his hands up in greeting. “My man! Hero of the hour! What’s happening?!”

Jean can’t help but recoil, wary of the spotlight of Connie’s drilling stare and blinding-white grin, and the way he moves to slap Jean cheerfully on the shoulder as he approaches.

“H-hey—” Jean squeaks, barely able to spit out any words before Sasha starts to crow. She pushes away the _apatosaurus_ with both hands more forcefully, twisting away from its greedy jaws to throw another gleaming smile Jean’s way.

“Marco told us what you did for the little trike!” she coos, “He stopped by this morning and serenaded us all about it. I’ve never heard him talk so fast – _ever_. Which is saying something!”

Jean scratches the nape of his neck – sticky with sweat – awkwardly. He scuffs his feet in the sand.

“’S no big deal,” he murmurs, “I just— y’know. Pressed some buttons and read some graphs. Anyone could do it.”

“Not the way _we_ heard it,” Connie snorts, “Marco was singing your praises this morning, believe me, man. You’re in his good books, for sure. Actually—” Connie pauses for a moment, his smile transforming into a wry grin that’s more than unsettling. Something mischievous passes with a bat of swift wings across his eyes; Jean watches him motion with a tilt of his chin towards the roof of Jean’s hotel. “—he came outta your place this morning, didn’t he? Sounds like you’re at the _top_ of the list in his good books, bud.”

Jean knows he goes red, and the splutter that stumbles and vomits from his lips doesn’t prove otherwise. Connie cackles with wicked laughter, and Sasha shares a giggle too, biting down hard on her lower lip as she shares cheesy glances with her colleague.

“I— I, no, it wasn’t—fuck, it wasn’t like that—” Jean tries to defend himself gruffly, but to little avail. He feels like he’s evaporating, and can practically hear the hiss of steam escaping from his ears. He doesn’t try to fight it. “I just— I just came by to ask if one of you guys could – _uhm_ – take me up to the … to the _triceratops’_ pen, if you’re not too … busy …”

Connie sobers up instantly, his back straightening, his shoulders squaring, and his amusement vanishing into sincerity. Jean’s eyes fall on his tan hands as he delves into the pockets of his khaki shorts.

“You can drive right?” he asks, “Not that it really matters ‘cus you don’t technically need a licence here and there ain’t no cops, but— you just take my keys and get the Jeep back by night, yeah?”

He tosses Jean a keyring which is more jingling trinkets than actual keys – and Jean fumbles to catch it, nearly dropping the bundle into the dust as he tries to clutch it against his chest.

“Is that okay—?” Jean quips, “You guys barely know me, and I mean— I could just—”

“It’s chill, man,” Connie grins with a wave of his hand. “You can’t exactly steal it, can you? Drive it off into the sea, maybe, but that’s a pretty dumb thing to do—”

“We’re busy here all day,” Sasha cuts in, “So we’re not needing the Jeep. You know the drive, right? Or do you need us to draw your directions? ‘Cus they’ll probably be bad anyway.”

 

* * *

 

Jean has Connie draw a crude map of the route on the back of a napkin pulled from the keeper’s pocket – which is speckled with brown stains that Jean really hopes isn’t _apatosaurus_ faeces – but for all Connie’s elaborate explanations and exaggerated hand gestures, the directions are about as useful as a goldfish against a _mosasaurus_. Jean is fortunate that he has a good memory, and remembers which twists in the road lead up into the hills.

Connie’s Jeep itself is another matter entirely. Jean doesn’t want to know the last time it had a service – if it’s _ever_ had a service, given how he can physically feel the tremble of the crumbling axel whenever he hits a pot-hole too squarely. He grips onto the steering wheel with white knuckles, his blunt finger nails scoring crescent grooves in the peeling leather. The windows seem more plexiglass than actual glass, flexing and _wubbing_ with every jostle of the tires that causes Jean to jolt in his seat and be flung back against the headrest. How such windows are meant to hold up against a peeved, adult _stegosaurus_ , or the mace-like tail of an _ankylosaur_ , Jean doesn’t want to know. He swears gruffly under his breath more than a few times.

He feels his heart distinctly in his throat, and is acutely aware of just how _small_ he is, alone in the cobbled-together car, as he skids along the still-sodden track up into the hills; either side of the dirt road is flanked by the towering, electrified wires of fence pens that don’t nearly look strong enough or high enough to neutralise the fretful build-up in his stomach. He keeps his eyes glued to the puddles that he rumbles through, and on the murky-brown water that splatters up over the hood and the windshield when he presses his foot down harder on the accelerator.

Jean breathes a sigh of relief when the _triceratops_ command centre appears at the end of the track, all concrete walls and ugly, square lines that make the base look more like a prison than a research facility, but which he’d much rather be _inside of_ than outside of – the Jeep’s tires squelch in the mud as Jean slams the brakes just a little too neurotically.

The run-off from the storm has yet to soak into the ground, leaving the pebbled driveway pitted with tiny puddles and sandy rainwater, and the grass and ferns marshy and swamp-like. The air is intensely muggy, sticking humidly to the backs of Jean’s knees and the crooks of his elbows beneath his long pants and shirt sleeves. He hasn’t grown accustomed to the feeling of cotton sticking to him like a slick, second skin, and nor does he want to. He prefers the drier heat.

He recognises Marco’s Jeep abandoned in front of the building – its wheels caked in thick mud, but its paint-job far less patchy than the contraption Jean was subject to driving – and one of its windows is rolled down carelessly. (Not that there’s any threat of stealing a car, Jean thinks, reminded of Connie’s teasing words.)

Marco’s Jeep is empty, however – because Jean does permit himself a rueful glance just to check, peaking through the windows to see if there’s anyone stealing a few minutes’ kip on the back seat – so he’s forced to turn to the door.

His ID doesn’t work when he swipes it against the keypad, a red light flashing in his face informing him that he doesn’t have the security clearance for this area of the park – but it’s not much surprise. He stabs the comms button and waits for the shrill chatter of the dialling tone to be replaced with a fuzzy voice that will probably deny him access anyway once he explains why he’s here.

He’s pleasantly surprised.

“’Sup, brother,” comes a tinny voice through the intercom, “Got you on the camera – your ID not working? Always happening, no sweat. Just give me a sec, and I’ll let ya’ right on in—”

“I’m just looking for Marco,” Jean interrupts, glancing up at the security camera above his head, “He around?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s about,” the intercom replies languidly – Jean envisions the man behind the voice throwing his dirty work boots up on a desk and reclining back in his chair as he chews cuddishly on a pith of old gum – “He’s in the pen with the li’l ‘un. You can get in ‘round the back if you wanna. I’ll take the gate off the code for ya’.”

“Thanks, man.”

 _No need for a break-in, then_. Jean’s relieved.

 

* * *

 

Jean walks the long way around the hillside base – choosing to go right and trundle around two-thirds of the concrete-slab walls before realising that he should’ve just turned left from the front door.

The habitation centre (a little like a riding stable block) is mainly cast-iron bars – open to the elements save for a few slabs of corrugated metal offering a poor man’s (a poor _dinosaur’s_ ) idea of safety from the heavier rains – and a patch of weed-pricked land fenced off by shoulder-height electrical fences that one might use to keep cows or horses from wandering into main roads.

The gate is opened as promise, and Jean slips inside stealthily, cushioning the noise of the bars swinging shut behind him with the flat of his palm, and hoping that no-one more senior finds him snooping around way beyond his jurisdiction.

He hears the soft, romantic lilt of Marco’s voice before he sees him; the thickness of the humid air does little to amplify the inflections in his voice, coddling his tone and making it all the more soft and encompassing to Jean’s ears. The familiar, guttural grunt of a large dinosaur accompanies Marco’s gentle, soothing hum, and so Jean follows the noise, the rumbles growing louder when he rounds a corner and comes across what his uneducated self would call a stable.

The _triceratops_ mother lies on her belly in the midst of a sea of straw wadding, her bulbous stomach inflating and deflating like a balloon made of leather hide, and her head tossing from side to side impatiently, her mighty horns looking ever more eager-to-gorge and threatening to Jean.

Beside her lies the infant – barely an infant, given it’s now the size of an adult hippopotamus or a fully-grown rhino – its grumbles still an octave higher than its parent, but still deep enough for Jean to feel the rumble perforate his gut as he stands a few feet back from the bars, eyes focused on those beady of the juvenile as it bucks his head as it smells his presence.

Marco is kneeling in front of the young trike, his back to the bars and his hands resting on the flank of the juvenile, his palms spanning the rough skin and feeling each and every deep and unsettled breath that the youngster pulls in. His uniform looks crisper – and cleaner – than last night, so Jean figures he’s had the chance to change since leaving, and is certainly glad of it. Even for someone apparently so augmented by unparalleled energy and enthusiasm, Jean knows that Marco only had a few hours’ sleep, and he must be _exhausted_.

“Cálmate,” Marco coos, his voice not betraying any weak-will or fatigue – although it’s of little surprise to Jean. “Necesitas descansar, gordita.”

The trike tries to wrangle free of Marco’s hands – which given its size, is easy as swatting away a fly – and bucks its head with another low whimper.

Jean figures Marco’s not the only one who’s had a rough night. Jean’s never been much of an animal person – his parents never let him have a pet when he lived at home, and there’s no way he can afford to keep a cat or dog in his apartment back in Florida – but he trusts himself enough to know when the cry of an animal is pained and weary. The juvenile’s cries are still weak, and its insides are undoubtedly still tender from the poison all too recently diluted in its system.

Jean feels sympathy for the creature. It must rightly _suck_ to feel so much pain, but not know the cause, or how to be rid of it.  He feels his shoulders slump and his lips press into a tight, discerning line, and if he sighs to himself quietly, the trike must hear it, for it raises its head again and its attentive eyes meet Jean’s muted gaze through the bars, a gravelly caw rumbling from its beaked mouth.

“Cálmate,” Marco hushes again, urging the infant to stay at rest at its mother’s side, “You’re only going to make it worse if you don’t rest, ¿vale?”

Jean knows his gaze becomes tender, and there’s little he can do to stop himself or scold himself, as he knows he should. His eyes soften upon Marco’s back – upon the starchy fabric of Marco’s uniform that stretches near creaseless across his broad shoulders, and upon the way the muscles in Marco’s back give and move beneath his shirt as he flexes forward to pat down the spine of the squealing juvenile – and it’s all Jean can do to bite into his lip and scrunch his eyes up for just a moment, before he presses forward against the bars and throws caution to the wind, succumbing to his irrefutable fondness.

“Glad to see she made it through the night,” he says, his voice sounding coarse and untested even to his own ears. Marco doesn’t strike him as one to startle, but Jean watches him prickle, and imagines greedily the dark hairs on the back of Marco’s neck rising with the sound of Jean’s voice. (Jean would never admit to the spark of excitement that electrifies his chest and tingles in his fingers as he wraps his palms around the bars of the pen. Partially because he hasn’t wanted to put a name to it yet, and partially because he already has, and some part of his is scared of owning up to it.)

“Jean,” Marco breathes wistfully, his surprise quickly molten and airy as he turns to look over his shoulder. His lips roll over the soft vowels, so soft that Jean might mistake his name for an exhalation of air rather than a word. He can’t help but gulp, his eyes flickering away to the juvenile momentarily, before being drawn magnetically back to Marco, who finds himself more resolutely, and speaks again. “ _Lo siento_ , yes. We are— _ah_ — very glad. This little girl still has lots to do, you know? It wasn’t her time yet.”

Marco turns to pet the trike, slapping his hand heartily against its flank; the juvenile tries to shake him off, and the mother – raising her colossal head lazily – snorts abruptly, the rush of air from her nose bellowing away the straw that she rests her chin in. Marco laughs brazenly, rocking back on his haunches with an iridescent, enamoured sort of grin, and Jean can’t help but mimic it, the corners of his thin lips lifting as the mother _triceratops_ tries to nuzzle her infant.

“Okay, okay,” Marco gushes, hauling himself to his feet with a creak – Jean sees his wear in the way he has to push himself up from the floor with an effort unbecoming of his usually sunny exterior, and it transforms itself into a crease in Jean’s mild frown – “I’m going, I’ll leave you alone now. No need to get huffy. You work on getting better, okay?”

Jean backs away from the bars as Marco slips from the stable, taking care in sliding the deadbolt across the door and ensuring it doesn’t budge; Jean presses himself against the back wall of the small space, the metal cold to the touch as he squishes his hands behind the small of his back.

He is acutely aware of the few feet of space between him and Marco – not in the sense that it is too much or too little, because Jean has yet to decide that for himself – but merely the fact that it is there, and he is conscious of it.

Marco is cautious of it too – or so Jean imagines in the way he considers Jean for a moment, and then the concrete floor between them, and then turns back to the bars of the stable without saying a word, his eyes soft upon the _triceratops_ pair as he appraises them once more.

It’s not his pride that Jean has to swallow – because Jean has little of _that_ whenever he’s around Marco (he puts it down to using it all up when dealing with the most boisterous Ymir and Eren) – but there’s certainly something with mass that he has to force down his throat, feeling the way its bulk slides thickly down the inside of his gullet, compressing his windpipe enough to make his breaths stutter.

Marco remains fixated on the _triceratops_ , and it’s clearly enough to make him relax, the tautness in his shoulders dissipating and the rigidity of his posture becoming slack the longer his gazes upon the mother butting her head against her offspring.

Jean is fixated upon the way Marco breathes – each rise and fall of his back like a countdown – and then he’s fixated upon how many steps it would take for him to capture the distance and cross the space to Marco’s side.

Five steps. Maybe six. It’s not far, and Jean knows he wants to. He feels it ruminating in his feet as he wriggles his toes within his smart shoes, which have lost their polish with the mud.

Jean wonders if many people experience this unexplainable gravity towards a person they’ve only just met. It’s only taken a few weeks – and a handful of hours – for him to have fallen into an orbit, both terrifying and exhilarating to think about; but equally, it’s as if his orbit is not nearly close enough, and he would not mind if he were to fall a little closer and a little faster.

He really _likes_ Marco. He’s not entirely sure what that means – if it’s more than just enjoying his company, and his unrelenting love for the animals he cares for, or if it’s even something worth putting a name to that’s more than just a friendship.

“Jean? ¿Que m’iche?”

Marco is staring at him from over his shoulder, a smile caught between amusement and scepticism upon his lips. Jean knows he shouldn’t be looking at his lips like that.

“I’m— uh— sorry, just … just spaced out for a second,” he fumbles, spilling his words clumsily. “Just thinking.”

Dimples form at the corners of Marco’s mouth, framing the quirk in his lips as he tries to rein in his smirk and conceal the way his thick eyebrows furrow in teasing.

“ _Claro_ ,” he chuckles lightly, before quickly sobering, “Do you need to get to work?”

Jean scratches the back of his neck awkwardly as he ducks his head, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the concrete. He feels almost like a child admitting to their parent or teacher that they’re playing truant from school.

“I, uh— kinda called in sick today,” he admits, “So, no.”

Marco frowns.

“Called in sick?” he repeats slowly, both hesitant and concerned as he turns fully away from the _triceratops_ to face Jean. “But … you are not sick, are you?”

Jean snorts unattractively through his nose, unable to stifle how eager his grin feels.

“No,” he says as meekly as he can manage, daring to meet Marco’s gaze which colours intensely with a worry that tickles Jean in just the right way. “No, I’m … pretty good, actually.”

Marco folds his arms sternly, a pout upon his lips as he attempts to vitrify a scowl upon his features – but it doesn’t suit him, and Jean can hear the essence of laughter trying to bubble through the severity in the tone he puts on for show.

“Well, then,” he schools, “I am lucky that you are here. I have my rota to do, and my partner did _actually_ call in sick today, so— it sounds like you are going to be my, uh— my slave today. ¿Vale?”

Jean nods, sinking his teeth into the grin that stretches broadly and unsparingly across his narrow features. He feels himself relax.

“Vale,” he repeats, his Spanish accent undoubtedly appalling. Marco feigns a dramatic cringe. _Okay_.

 

* * *

 

There’s a bumbling rhythm to the way Marco’s Jeep bounces over grassy tussocks and through the muddy marshlands – but Jean learns how to rise in the passenger seat with every jolt that ricochets through the suspension and throws him against the car door, and his grip upon the handle above the open window flexes, his knuckles blooming once more with colour less white.

Marco has a joyous whistle on his lips, pursing his lips with a tangle of strung-together notes that match the beat he taps with his fingers on the steering wheel, his spirits elevated. He handles the shift stick without looking – almost recklessly as he rattles it into a lower gear to haul the Jeep up the side of a steep, grassy gully – and his palms are loose on the wheel, and his eyes loose on the plains ahead, drifting from the windshield, to the passenger window, to the passing underbelly of some trailing clouds above their heads that obscure the grandness of the infinite blue sky.

It’s easy to fall in _like_ with someone so at ease with the tapered beat of the world – and it’s even easier for Jean when he’s been swept from a life that’s always been numbers and graphs and results and order. He feels the uptightness in his chest being unwound like a cog with every rumble of the Jeep’s engine and every freckle he notices and counts upon the inside of Marco’s extended wrists. The coil of neurosis – kept tight and tensile by so many years rushing around labs and looking at school brochures and figuring that there’s a reason _things like this_ never go as hoped because he’s _obviously meant for more important things like work_ – feels like it stretches out behind them in the wake of mud splatters and grass ripped up by the revolving tires, and creates a trail through the grassland of the island paradise.

Jean cannot rip his eyes away from Marco, and even when he thinks he does, he finds himself catching Marco’s dark eyes in the rear-view mirror and exchanging a bashful smirk that makes his heart flutter in a way that has no scientific explanation to soothe the anxious tremor that tends to accompany such a feeling.

Jean learns the purse of Marco’s mouth as his hums his songs from home – the round o-shape is enigmatic – and he charts the freckles on his tanned forearms, pleasantly curious as to which he was born with – a baby all speckled and pink – and which he has earned as badges from so many days toiling in the sun.

He’s never met someone quite like Marco. Maybe that’s what makes his company so appealing and his demeanour so easy to be around. Maybe it’s just because he’s grown too sick and too tired of Levi’s whip, and his mother telling him to work hard to earn himself a cushy life, and Professor Hanji’s constant pressure to work after hours to get papers filled-out and experiments finished.

Jean hopes it’s not just that. He’d rather have some substance – and some sustenance – to the reason he thinks his heart ticks, and not have to reduce himself to the shallow depths of all the failed dates he’s ever suffered in the past. He knows it would be a disservice to both him and Marco if the reason he is so parched for Marco’s attention is because he’s _bored_.

“You didn’t wear very good clothes for getting dirty,” Marco remarks with a flippant smile and a flash of white teeth, something whimsical and mischievous passing like a bird across the sun through his expression. “I hope you don’t mind the mud. We have lots of weeds to find today.”

Jean doesn’t think he’s _bored_. It’s just a doubt. He’s never felt quite like this; alight with the flicker of promise and expectation.

Marco seems to abandon the Jeep in the middle of a grassy plain, not even caring to slam the driver’s door behind him as he hops out with a bold exclamation that Jean doesn’t quite catch. What Jean does catch, however, is the pair of thick, industrial gloves, padded on the palms, which Marco tosses over his shoulder as Jean slips from the car to join him – Jean barely catches them, sidling up to Marco, standing over a twisting thicket of _Indian Lilac_ , its purple flowers vibrant against the extensive, luscious greenery.

Marco pulls on his own pair of gloves and grapples the spindly stalk at its base with both hands, one foot pressed in anchorage against the loose soil that covers the roots. He gives a sharp tug, stripping a handful of thin leaves from the stem with his fists, but a second tug uproots the entire plant in a fountain of clumpy earth. He looks satisfied.

“Got you!” Marco exclaims triumphantly, grasping the plant in tight fingers as he thrusts it towards Jean. “One down!”

Jean scoffs lightly as he takes the plant from Marco, the tiny, purple-white blossoms looking less magnificent now that they wilt in his hands. Jean realises quickly what he’s been roped into helping with.

“Lots to go,” Jean replies crassly, “Not risking a repeat of last night, huh?”

Marco nods firmly, his strides long and powerful as he marches off on a tangent to the Jeep, having spotted another clump of weeds some ten or fifteen feet away. He waves his hands, and Jean comes scurrying after.

“¡Qué no!,” Marco crows, “ _No way_. I don’t think that _la gordita_ – the _baby_ – will eat any more after she has been so sick, _pero_ — you know— it is better to be safe than sorry, no?”

He uproots another lilac plant with a loud huff, passing it back into Jean’s scrabbling hands as he tries not to drop the other plant.

“So you’re going to find every single one of them in this entire paddock?” Jean asks incredulously, a chuckle tickling his tone. Marco turns back to him upon hearing his brisk amusement, a hand resting on his cocked hip and an eyebrow quirked.

“Not me,” he replies courtly, “ _Us_. You are going to help me, no?”

Jean’s never been a fan of getting _down and dirty_ – in the _muddy_ sense of the word, of course – but he learns rather rapidly that he is very malleable when it comes to Marco’s _incandescent_ smile, and especially when it comes to the little crow’s feet creases that line the corners of Marco’s eyes happily when Jean agrees with a playful smile. He wonders if that weakness could be a bad thing – but he barely has time to question whether Marco is the sort to capitalise on such a fault, before Jean is rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt and unbuttoning his collar to allow the muggy air to circulate over his sticky skin.

Marco laughs electrically, slapping Jean boldly in the centre of his thin shoulder blades – and undoubtedly leaving a glove-shaped smear of dirt in the creases of Jean’s shirt – but it’s all Jean can do to continue to rumble down the one-way path he’s set off upon, and smear the back of his hand across his forehead in a smudge of sweat and dust that has him feeling a little less formal and a little more inebriated with the freedom of it all.

The plants that they do find are thrown unceremoniously into the backseat of the Jeep – safely out of reach of the curious _triceratops_ that Jean catches ambling around the edges of the paddock meadow, watching their keeper with curious snorts and earthy rumbles from their bellies – with Marco’s promise that they will burn all the flowers and leaves when they return to the base.

Jean barely recognises the colour of his clothes, the further they wade into the longer grass and the thicker undergrowth – his slacks smeared with brown and grey, and his dress shoes coated with mud, and his shirt a mosaic of handprints not Jean’s own; it turns out that Marco is more than willing to make a mess of Jean’s smart clothes, chuckling wickedly to himself with every opportunity he seizes to slap his palm across Jean’s back, or scoop him up by the waist when he almost walks himself into boggy ground. (Jean squawks unattractively every time he is uprooted.)

When Marco sploshes through the murky puddles before him, the brown water splashing up his bare calves like splatters of dark freckles, and Jean teases him for being a filthy excuse for a human being, Jean realises something crucial as Marco tips his head to the side and pouts, asking what the word _filthy_ means.

“Dirty,” Jean bemoans, trudging through the squelching mud that squeaks beneath his feet, “It means you’re _disgusting_.”

Marco bites his lip as he grins, stopping in his tracks through the swampy undergrowth and turning to face Jean forwardly, before wiping the thumb of his dirty glove across Jean’s forehead symbolically. Jean scoffs, reeling away with mock horror – that’s slightly _genuine horror_ at the thought of all the microbes that must be _in_ that soil – and swats Marco away with the floppy stem of one of the lilacs they’ve unearthed.

“Now you are _filthy_ too,” Marco cajoles, musically. Jean all but stumbles, little preventing him from doing so other than the repulsion of getting a facial of _Jurassic mud_.

But as for that crucial thing: Jean realises it just as invasively as Marco’s hands are upon his cheeks, trying to muddy up his skin even more with joyous, carefree laughter.

Jean has never wanted to a _kiss_ a person more than in this moment. And unlike everything else on this island – every dirty thing, every thing with teeth, every thing that wants to eat him as a light snack after lunch – the thought doesn’t scare him as he might have once expected.

Jean wonders if muddy kisses taste gross – what with the dirt on his lips and all – but he doesn’t have the gall to find out, following in Marco’s footprints sunken in the earth as they meander through the fenland, Marco’s lips taking upon the mantle of a happy tune once more as Jean tries to pay him back with a dirty handprint upon the back of Marco’s uniform.

 

* * *

 

Jean is not sure if he would qualify himself as screwed – because there’s a part of him that reminds him firmly that whatever hope he has can only ever manifest itself a holiday _fling_ of a romance, and he’s more than okay with taking things one step at a time, as he always has – but there’s another part of himself that continues to hang on every flash of a smile and every burdening thought of when he might next receive the flickering ghost of a touch.

And once the thought of kissing Marco rummages through his head quite thoroughly – Jean can’t help but think such a thing would be rather _enjoyable_. Marco has nice lips; nice eyelashes that flutter against his cheeks; nice hands that Jean would not mind roaming his arms curiously. Things like that.

It would be _more_ enjoyable if preparations for the park opening didn’t spring upon them like prey leaping away from the path of a carnivorous hunter, and it would be _more_ enjoyable if the thought of the flight home in only a few weeks didn’t weight on Jean’s mind with all the mass of a grown _apatosaurus_. Jean cannot do much about either of those things.

He doesn’t get to see Marco for a while after their day of truancy and Jean’s longing for dirty kisses – of the innocent sense – burdens him with a craving that cannot really be requited.

Levi doesn’t even ask him how he’s feeling when he trudges into the lab the following day, and if Mikasa _does_ ask him, he doesn’t quite hear it, too caught up in a _cloud cuckoo land_ that is a mass of green grass and sprawling ferns, and not beeping machinery and starchy-white lab coats.

Jean works on autopilot, his fingers familiar enough with the buttons of the spectrometers to let his eyes and his mind wander as he bumbles around the laboratory, taking notes on things he cannot call to memory, but knows that Levi will have his balls for if he doesn’t complete.

The opening of the park has everyone on edge, even in the lab. Jean hears enough about it from Ymir – who’s always regaling him with tales of Krista’s stress in human resources as the big day rears its head over the horizon – but it’s Levi’s grisly attitude and Mikasa’s flightiness that really gets under his skin, and saturates him with a stress that he didn’t really intend on getting infected with.

He texts Marco a few times – too nervous to be too forceful, and too unsure in himself and his new feelings to be decisive about what he might want and what might be too much too soon – but they pass each other like ships at sea. Marco’s lunch breaks – if he even takes them – never coincide with Jean’s free hours, and he pulls overtime hours that make Jean’s eyes bulge when he’s wrapped up in bed at night and Marco is still somewhere out on the field in the dark.

It would disappoint Jean, and make him sad – if he had enough _time_ to be sad. As it is, time is a luxury, and every waking minute seems like it needs to be rushed, with things to do, and samples to measure, and flasks to boil, and paperwork to toss onto Levi’s desk as the supervisor squawks loudly over some other, poor soul’s shoulder about _deadlines_. Whenever Jean crawls back to the hotel at night, he’s all too tired to think about things like disappointment – he’s gone the moment his head hits the downy pillow.

 

* * *

 

 _Jurassic World_ opens a week later.

On the first day that the gates are open, Jean realises that he has never seen so many people in one place. To call the view he witnesses from his hotel window _busy_ would be the grossest of understatements, when what he sees is more like the mill of a termite colony, tiny insects scrabbling across the sun-baked concrete below in their _thousands_ , fountaining in and out of the visitor’s centre like rushes of tidal waves, and steeping the air with boisterous shouts and manic screeching that makes Jean’s skin crawl _immediately_.

He doesn’t like people on the best of days – even the streets of Miami, which he chose deliberately for being one of the lazier sun-stretch cities, make him rue leaving his apartment on the worst mornings – but crowds like this are another thing entirely. He fears he’ll be swallowed up by the tide of holiday-goers the moment he tries to sneak from the revolving doors of the hotel lobby, and he’ll never even make it to the lab, his body lost to the stampede of excited feet. Levi would sure be mad, but at least Jean would be trampled enough not to care about his supervisor’s wrath.

He dresses for work with a groan lodged in his throat and a weight already dragging his shoulders down before he’s even left his room – nightmarish thoughts of having to squeeze through the throngs of people, and then spend the day being stared at in the laboratory by insipid tour groups being paraded around by a guide with the fakest of white smiles and most twee of American accents, plague him relentlessly.

Still, nothing can be worse that ensuing Levi’s ire – or so Jean believes until he takes that first, sacrificial step out onto the promenade. And then he would gladly suffer hours of the man breathing down his neck (if he could reach) and scolding him with scathing remarks, for escape from the hellish scene that unfolds before him.

There are people _everywhere_. Jean didn’t realise so many people cared about dinosaurs. Jean didn’t realise so many people could _afford_ the extortionate prices Masrani Global is charging for the Jurassic experience. Jean didn’t realise so many people were willing to throw to the wind the fact that a God-damn _t.rex_ rampaged through San Diego little over twenty years ago – because hey, that’s practically ancient history now, and what else could go wrong?

Getting to the laboratory doesn’t exactly do his blood pressure any favours. He has to duck into the shade and shelter of a gift shop awning, and then the flutes of a parasol, to catch his breath and clutch his chest and pray not to have a heart attack before he manages to ooze through the laboratory door. He knows when he showers that evening, he’ll be littered with poppy bruises like purple and red petal welts across his skin from where he’s been knocked about by brackish and brazen people shoving their way through the crowds, and obnoxious children escaping the holds of their overbearing mothers to elbow their paths apparently _through_ Jean’s kidneys to get to the _big and scary_ dinosaurs.

He’s thankful for the staff-only entrance to the laboratory, unwilling to fight with the crowds in the visitor’s centre, even if he does almost collapse the moment he stumbles into the locker-room, plastering himself against the cool metal of his locker with a groan of exhausted relief. He’s not sure how long he remains clinging to the metal frame – he closes his eyes for a moment that probably turns into many moments – but is interrupted by Mikasa’s brisk laughter from over his shoulder.

“Good morning,” she chuckles, “You’ve seen the crowds, I take it?”

“Please kill me,” Jean replies with a whimper.

 

* * *

 

Jean is glad of the laboratory for the first time in a while – the droning hum of the mass spectrometer is no longer an incessant earworm, but in fact rather soothing, and helps to ease his frantic heart. (He’s also quite partial to the ability to move around at his own pace and not be _stomped to death_ by marches of people.)

He knows he’s not the only one on edge either. _InGen_ ’s collection of Navy men-for-rent don’t seem all that perturbed by the fingers being stabbed against the glass by tourist groups and sticky kids bored by the thought of being traipsed around the corridors of a rather dull laboratory (for they are likely still all too caught up in understanding how exactly rotary evaporators or incubators work for caring about spectators); but a few of Jean’s compatriots throw worried glances between one another, apparently unused to the feeling of being the ones put on exhibit behind glass walls.

(Jean finds an amusing irony in it all at least, which is enough to keep his mind from wandering and his skin from prickling unnervedly. He never thought he’d ever be able to relate to a _t.rex_ , but here he is, being treated like an animal in a cage, being ogled by people on the other side of a fence.)

Mikasa is the star of the show, but it comes as little surprise to Jean, who’s more than glad to have the majority of people rushing past his laboratory to get to the hatchery. (He doesn’t blame them – it’s much more interesting than watching him potter around the benches, mixing a few flasks together, and weighing the odd sample, but principally staring at a computer screen.)

Mikasa has a brilliant smile – when it’s real. Jean considers himself lucky to have seen it, because the smile that she presents to the groups of handsy kids who try to touch the eggs in her incubator is stretched and entirely forced, whip sharp enough that Jean wouldn’t put it past her biting off the fingers of children that overstep the mark. Nor would he blame her.

By the end of the day, he’s exhausted. He deliberately lingers in the laboratory after hours, both eager to avoid the crowds that might still be loitering out of doors, and to wait for Mikasa, who had promised to spend the evening holed up in his hotel room with him, gorging on takeout and room service, and distinctly avoiding any of their favourite bars that might now be teaming with overzealous tourists.

When she finally drags herself into the locker-room, Jean has already grabbed forty winks on the bench in the middle of the room, and sits up with a sleepy yawn.

“Wha’ time’s it?” he gabbles, pressing the back of his hand across his mouth as Mikasa deftly strips her lab coat.

“Just gone eight,” she says in a low tone. The grey bags beneath her eyes stand out starkly against her white skin. “I’ve decided that I’m never, _ever_ going to have children, Jean.”

Jean pulls himself upright, her comment begging a sly smirk on his lips.

“What? Only took your one shift to figure that out?” he grins, “You shoulda just let them get their hands snapped by the baby raptors. Woulda taught them a lesson.”

“And would have got me sued,” Mikasa laments with a sigh. “I cannot _believe_ I’m already in need of a day off. I shouldn’t have taken last Thursday out with Eren.”

“Got my next one at the end of the week,” Jean teases, earning a scornful and unimpressed look. “Sorry, I won’t rub it in. You wanna get something to drink with dinner tonight? I could fuckin’ use a beer or _five_ right now.”

Mikasa nods.

“Beer is not strong enough for what I need to forget,” she deadpans. “We should get a bottle of champagne – I just got my pay check through. We should celebrate our imminent demise at the hands of corporate greed.”

“Sounds like my sorta party.”

 

* * *

 

The rest of the week wallows in a similar sort of lethargy, which has Jean dragging his feet desperately towards the one day of solace shining like a beacon at the end of his week, promising him a lie-in and a whole twenty-four hours away from human company.

It turns out to be a pipedream of the most visceral kind – because he sure as hell wants to _disembowel_ Ymir and Eren when they pound aggressively on his hotel-room door at stupid o’clock in the morning of his supposed-date with his bed.

He doesn’t want to let them in – he really _doesn’t_. He tries ignoring Eren hollering and Ymir’s fist ramming on the door incessantly for as long as he can, wrapping his pillow around his head and smothering his ears, until he hears Ymir screech something about _going to get hotel security if he doesn’t open the door right this fucking instant_ – and the thought of being stripped of his bedsheets by strangers accompanied by his cackling “friends” doesn’t really do it for him. With a rueful grumble, he rolls reluctantly from the comfort of his mattress and the cosy dreams about freckled park rangers that he may or may not want to openly own up to, and clumsily pulls on a mismatched pair of shorts on a grubby band t-shirt from his undergrad days, before padding to the door.

Ymir and Eren launch themselves upon him the moment he turns the handle, bundling into the room with a raucous cacophony of laughter and excitable shrieking that is way too loud for Jean this early.

“Goooo awaaaaay,” Jean rumbles tiredly, his arms and legs leaden as he hangs from the door. “It’s my day-off, please leave.”

Eren flops backwards into Jean’s couch, the springs creaking in complaint. He crosses his ankles over the arm rest, his clumpy work boots creating a puff of dust as they knock together.

“And you’re gonna waste it sleeping?” he grins sardonically, and Jean would really want to punch him if he had the energy to lift his fists. “C’mon man. The park is our oyster. Ymir got some fast past tickets, and one totally has your name on it if you’re game.”

Jean frowns, turning to Ymir who leans casually against the cabinets of his kitchenette, having already pawed through his refrigerator but found nothing worth stealing. She sticks her hands deep into the pockets of her cargo shorts and rocks back and forth on her heels. Jean would never use the word _meek_ to describe Ymir, but there’s definitely something a little bashful about her demeanour.

“Krista gave ‘em to me,” she admits shyly, “Thought it could be like, y’know. A _date_. ‘Cept I don’t want Eren third wheeling.”

“So you want _me_ to fourth wheel to keep _him_ from third wheeling?” Jean says.

“Would you?”

“Oh, _Christ_.”

 

* * *

 

For all his romantic misgivings back in the States, Jean doesn’t actually have much practice being a tag-a-long. Most of his friends are from Hanji’s lab, and most of his friends, like him, don’t have any remarkable love lives to speak of. Social outings usually consist of congregating at someone’s dank and dirty apartment and sharing a few beers and a few rounds on _Guitar Hero_ – not chaperoning a thirsty lesbian around a park full of dinosaurs.

There’s a first time for everything, Jean assumes. And also a _last time_ , because he discovers quickly that following Ymir and Krista around like a reluctant dog being towed by its leash is not very high on his list of things he enjoys doing. Eren’s already moaning by the time they board the monorail, muttering and complaining about Ymir’s constant puppy-eyes and love-sick expression, and lamenting Jean with how much he’s had to _suffer_ every day in the field when the palaeontologist just won’t _shut up_ about how desperately in love she is with the human resources’ clerk. Jean tries to zone him out, but the alternative is watching Ymir try to gather the courage to hook her fingers with Krista’s pinkie, which is both awkward and abysmal – and despite how much bravado has been shoehorned into the lanky body of the freckled palaeontologist, Jean learns that she is atrocious at making a move.

Almost as atrocious as him.

Wait. No. That’s a _totally_ different scenario.

Ymir is infatuated, whereas Jean is— well, Jean is _curious_ about Marco. There’s no big revelation; there’s no desperation. He doesn’t want to get himself worked up into a tizzy and about _liking_ and _not-liking_ and all that sort of nonsense that he assumes he should have left behind in high school.

It’s as simple as breathing, if his breaths were a plethora of quiet and unsuspecting _what ifs_. It’s different. He insists that it’s different.

Jean doesn’t want it to be complicated – but he supposes when kisses and things are involved, it becomes complicated whether he likes it or not. But he can be cool about it. He can definitely be cool about it – he doesn’t need to fall into the pitfall of remembering how calloused the palms of Marco’s hands feel upon his knuckles, or wondering if his lips would be just a little chapped from spending so much time out of doors in the harsh conditions, or even—

(Jean is incredibly good – or bad – at lying to himself.)

“Just kiss already,” Eren grumbles, slinking down in his hard plastic seat beside Jean, grumpily folding his arms across his chest. Jean blinks owlishly down at the palaeontologist, wondering if he’d been voicing his thoughts allowed (and has crucified his dignity in the same sentence).

“W-what?” Jean squeaks. “W-what was that?”

Eren tilts his chin towards Ymir and Krista, sitting in the row in front of them on the monorail. The sprawling plains of the Gallimimus Valley fall away either side of the rail track, a blur of green and the distant blue of the sea just a smudge in the corner of Jean’s eye.

“Them. It’s _gross_ ,” Eren complains. “Ymir’s practically ready to jump her. Why don’t they just make out and be done with it. Maybe they’d get kicked off the train too. That would be great.”

“Oh. _Oh_ ,” Jean says, “Right. Yeah. _That_.”

Eren squints up at Jean, cocking an inquisitive eyebrow.

“What?” he leers, “What’s with that dumb expression?”

“What dumb expression?” Jean scowls, “ _Your_ expression is the dumb expression.”

“Only mimicking what I see,” Eren retorts crassly, wrinkling his nose, “Do you think Ymir will switch with me when we get to the gyrospheres? ‘Cus I don’t wanna be stuck in a glass ball with you, thanks.”

Jean rolls his eyes, sliding lower in his seat and mirroring Eren’s disgruntled posture.

“Believe me,” he says, “There are places I’d much rather be too. Like my _bed_.”

 

* * *

 

The problem with fast passes – Jean decides – is that there’s nothing all that _fast_ about them. Half as many people buy the queue jumps in the hope that they can beat the crowds to the best attractions, but all that results in is there being yet another queue. Jean’s been to Disney World quite a few times, living in Florida, so it’s not something he’s unfamiliar with – but at least at Disney, no-one is likely to get freaked out by the thought of a humanoid-sized Mickey Mouse.

Dinosaurs are a different story.

Jean leans back against the wooden fence that runs alongside the unmoving line, tilting his head back and letting his eyes flicker shut as he tries to absorb as much sunlight as he can, trying to block out Ymir and Eren’s prattling explanations as to why Krista need not be scared of going in the gyrospheres – because apparently there’s six inches of reinforced acrylic glass between her and anything that might get too nosey, so there’s _definitely_ no need to be worried.

 _Six inches is not enough_ , Jean rationalises internally, understanding Krista’s growing reservations the longer they stand in the stagnating queue. He’d rather not have to test the strength of the gyrosphere should an _apatosaurus_ want to step on him. He held the same hesitations the first time he stepped out of the comfort of the laboratory; he sympathises with her fears of getting too close to things that – logically – shouldn’t exist.

( _Shouldn’t exist, and yet are fuelling her pay checks_ , Jean muses, with a small smirk. But then, he’s in exactly the same boat, and he was the one practically in tears the first time he saw the _t.rex_.)

“They’re just herbivores,” Ymir insists, trying her best to encourage Krista to stick it out – though probably more for Ymir’s own benefit, than Krista’s personal happiness. “They’re not gonna try anything. They probably won’t even give two shits about us when we’re out there. They’ll just be like: _oh, there’s a nice, glass ball full of humans, but look at this delicious fern over here that I can eat. Holy fucking shit, that’s a great fern_.”

“And I mean,” Eren cuts in, “If _stegosaurus_ was suddenly to turn carnivorous in a freak series of totally implausible events, it’s only gonna be interested in the weakest of the pack for its dinner – and let’s face it: _that’s Jean_.”

“I _heard_ that, Eren.”

Eren’s humour doesn’t go over so well on Krista either – and whilst Ymir paws at her desperately, and Eren tries to crack yet another pitiable excuse for a joke, Jean wishes to be anywhere but there. He’s had enough of standing in line. Had enough of listening to Eren clatter on bawdily, and Ymir fail miserably at getting into Krista’s pants. Had enough of the _rote_.

Jean is surprised in himself – he’s not usually so bored of the ordinary, too often finding sanctity in the things he knows well and can control. (Although there’s no sanctity ever to be found in Eren’s sense of humour, he’ll admit that.) He feels his fingers twitch and his feet long to move, stiffened and laden by standing up too long in one spot. He tries to imagine what long grass feels like against his calves, recalling what it felt like to wade through the fields with Marco, alone together amongst the unpolluted greenery. He would gladly do that again.

The prattle of loud chatter is an irritant, itching Jean’s ears and making him pray for silence – shrieking children are too loud, and the obnoxious comments of middle-aged mothers complaining about queue lengths does nothing to appease his state of mind. It only had taken him one day to begin to wish for the park to be empty and silent again – but a whole week of suffering the hustle and bustle has made him realise that he’d gladly be the one to kick them all out one by one if it meant a return to the peace and quiet. He’s lucky of course – being in the lab means he only has to cope with being gawked at, and not spoken to. He wonders how long the park employees who actually have to _deal_ with the public will last, and how long until Mr. Masrani’s great endeavour comes collapsing in on itself.

And that’s all providing a _t.rex_ doesn’t eat a pesky child beforehand.

Or _InGen_ doesn’t finally seize the chance to crack its knuckles. There’s that too. The thoughts of the secretive files piled neatly on Levi’s desk, and the cold shoulder that gets turned Jean’s way every time he asks to pertinent a question about _indominus_ , still nibble at him crudely.

Eren is yapping now – like a small, weedling of a terrier that doesn’t know when to shut up – and Krista’s lost most of the colour in her rosy cheeks. Jean wishes he were more a people-person; he’d probably have a stronger thread of tolerance that could stretch further without threatening to snap.

He turns away from the others, leaning over the wooden fence with a sigh pushed from his stomach as the slats press into his gut. He folds his arms on top of the fence and feels his spine and shoulders pulled into an unforgiving slouch that mimics everything he’s feeling.

He wants to go home – back to the hotel that is. Grab a few winks, maybe some lunch, and possibly shoot Marco a text to see if he might be able to spirit him away to the deep entrenches of the park where visitors don’t get to stray. Maybe ask him if he wants to get dinner and a drink later. Maybe excuse some cavalier touches on one too many beers, but not really mean it. Maybe just see where the night takes them—

It’s a cheesy thought, and it makes Jean grimace. He’s apparently not tired _enough_ of the rote to be rid of the clichés. It makes him blush, the heat in his cheeks made only warmer by the beat of midday sun that has turned from a flower to a flog upon the back of his neck and his bare arms. He’s going to burn, and it’s going to be a good reminder to himself for the next few days of how it feels to cringe ruddily at his own, insipid thoughts.

He’s meant to be playing it _cool_.

There’s a rumble on the other side of the wicker fence, and Jean looks up as a caravan of park Jeeps go rumbling past the gyrosphere station on the dirt tracks that meander through the untoured undergrowth. He counts them lazily as they trundle past, finding mute fascination in the revolutions of the wheels that spit of mushrooms of brown dust in their wakes.

Three cars go past, and Jean ducks his head again, returning his pointed stare to his feet and the hope that the line might move _one day_ soon. He doesn’t quite hear the squeal of brakes on the dirt track road, nor how seizing tires ratter loose stones and the pebbles clip the scratched-up paint job – it’s all lost to the background commotion of parrot-like complaints and excitable shouts from people who have never seen an _apatosaurus_ in their lives. (Jean sighs destitutely at the thought. _Can’t they rein it in for just a minute?_ )

Stones crunch under the excitable clamber of footsteps in Jean’s direction, and he tips his gaze upwards with a languid laziness that sublimes into a surprise that reflects the cautious grin he’s greeted with. Marco bites his lip meekly as he stands before Jean on the other side of the fence, his Jeep abandoned in the middle of the road with the driver’s door left open to the elements.

People are staring, but no-one more so than Jean.

“I thought it was you,” Marco beams, his earnestness constricting Jean’s chest to a messy pulp that threatens to make him wheeze. “That would have been awkward if it was somebody else.” The chuckle in his throat is dry and famished, and he scratches the hair cut shallow at the nape of his neck.

Jean blinks owlishly, and when he doesn’t say anything, Marco’s voice becomes a little more strained with concern.

“I … just thought I would say hello?” he pries gently, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t visit you at the lab this week, you know— but— ¿ _estás bien_ , Jean?”

“Estás … bien,” Jean parrots, repeating the words in a dopey monotone; suddenly all the thoughts of inviting Marco out for a casual dinner becomes the wool that clogs up his throat with potential awkward conversations and misunderstandings. He gulps, almost choking on his own saliva. “Sorry— _shit_ , yes, I’m fine— good, yeah—”

Marco’s shoulders seem to fall, his staunchly rigid stance melting into something more relaxed and easy – although it doesn’t do much for Jean’s ability to flounder over his own embarrassing, muddled words.

Marco doesn’t wear fatigue with ease – his sunny demeanour and the melodic lilt in his voice, sprinkled with shoots and leaves of enthusiasm, do not lend themselves to the same signs of tiredness that cling to Jean likes cobwebs and dusty films – but Jean does recognise the way Marco’s lopsided smile, so perfectly crooked and cheeky, seems just a little dampened, and his eyes not as electric and juvenated as expected.

Marco becomes bashful under Jean’s scrutiny, his dark gaze flashing to the stone-littered ground for a moment, poignant on his dusty work boots as he scuffs the tufts of grass that try to pierce through the stony soil.

“It’s been very busy, you know?” he says meekly with a half-shrug. Something in his eyes sparkles as Jean roams his face – a little magnetic, and a little impish; the frayed end of the livewire that makes Jean’s skin prickle, even if it has been swept over by clods of other things. “I haven’t had a moment to breathe in the last week, _Santo Dios_. I don’t think I have ever seen so many people, _ni siquiera en las calles de San José_ —” Marco pauses, a redness colouring his cheeks, staining his freckles pink and undoubtedly matching the burned shade of Jean’s own skin. He seems embarrassed to catch himself rambling.

“Sorry,” he says, “Uh— how has it been for you? Is it very busy in the lab?”

He maintains a distance – two or three steps still from the fence that Jean leans on, a gap wide enough to be considered polite, but equally hesitant and cautious. Jean can’t help but frown, feeling the conversation forced.

“’S alright,” Jean shrugs, “Well, as much as it can be when you spend the whole day trying not to think of yourself as a bug in a glass case. It’s been so busy as well, it’s like— well, it’s real hard to have time to myself, let alone … let alone have time to … y’know … _do_ … stuff.”

Jean trails off, knowing his eyes poise a question he hadn’t really meant on asking. Marco seems to understand implicitly, chewing down on his lower lip again in the way that Jean cannot bring himself to look away from.

“I know the feeling,” Marco admits bashfully, “Very much. I was hoping that, maybe— _ah_ — yes, I was quite sad that I couldn’t see you. I was hoping that you would come by and see the baby, but if you were so busy, I can understand why, _por supuesto_.”

Jean can repeat to himself an insurmountable number of times to _play it cool_ – because heaven knows he has little experience to speak of when it comes to deciding what an appropriate reaction might be to the surprisingly _fierce_ blush that Marco tries to ignore with a flittering gaze and a nibble on his lip. They don’t cover how to react to cute boys in _Intro to Bioengineering_. (Jean figures he should take it up with Professor Hanji when he returns home. It’s the sort of information he _really_ needs to know.)

Nonetheless, he tries to tell himself to rein it in. _Play it cool. You’re an adult. You’re not supposed to get weak at the knees at the thought of something so_ dumb _._

He scratches the back of his undercut, the fine hairs sticky with sweat that has accumulated there. He hopes his disgust doesn’t show too plainly upon his face when he withdraws his hand quickly.

Jean prides himself in being sensible. Jean knows that he often falls very short of such a mark.

“Y-yeah,” he mumbles dumbly, his throat aching dryly when Marco sneaks half a step forward, changing the distance between him and the fence from considerate to hopeful – and to _unignorable_ , from Jean’s point of view. “I mean, m-maybe we could— could catch some food and eat a movie— _watch_ a movie, fuck, I mean— y’know, one night, or … or something. Just hang out, y’know.”

Oh, how he wishes the line would start moving, and he could have the excuse to run, _run far away_ from this hole he’s dug himself and the fossil he’s about to turn himself into. Sadly, the fast-pass queue is still anything but fast.

Marco’s smile lights up his face with a diamond-like gleam. Jean regrets every single moment of his twenty-something years so far, and he regrets every facet of himself that doesn’t seem to understand _don’t come across as desperate when low-key asking someone on a date_.

“ _Si_ , that would be nice,” Marco beams, “I would like that very much, Jean.”

“O-okay!” Oh God, he’s squeaking. Jean doubts he can even _attempt_ to scrabble for any of the remaining shards of his dignity, fearful that he’ll cut himself. “O-okay, that’s— that’s good! Great— _uhm_ —”

He’s saved – or is he damned? – by a shout that echoes out from over Marco’s shoulder: another park ranger hangs from the passenger door of Marco’s abandoned Jeep, feet on the seat as he slams a palm down on the roof with a tinny-sounding echo. Jean prickles, knowing his own eyes to be wide where Marco rolls his instead.

“¡Oiga, _Casanova_!” the other ranger hollers, “¡Soque! ¡Estoy harto de los ojos corazónes! Tenemos otros compromisos, ¡vamos!”

The Spanish flies far enough over Jean’s head for him to be able to shrug it off – but not the way Marco seems to wince through a grin, as if caught red-handed doing something he knows he shouldn’t. He spares Jean something like an apology, sympathetic in his eyes and upon his lips, although Jean doesn’t know for what needs saying sorry.

“I’ve gotta go,” Marco admits coyly, “Nos vemos, ¿vale? Uh— _see you soon_. I promise.”

Jean is open-mouthed, stuttering over something that sounds like a mangled goodbye as Marco backtracks, pacing backwards until he’s forced to turn and look where he’s going, to save himself from a face full of dirt. Jean is less smooth – and it certainly feels like he’s just tripped forward onto his face, considering the fact he can almost taste the grit and dirt at the back of his throat – and he remains pinned against the fence stiffly, eyes not straying from Marco’s back as he trots back to his Jeep and earns a playful slap on the shoulder from his friend in the front seat.

Something like a _see you_ dies on Jean’s lips as barely a whisper, but the momentary quiet – congesting in his ears like a vacuum that leaves him vulnerable to only one thing (a _Marco_ thing) – is punctured unsparingly with the whip-sharp prick of Eren’s hooting laughter.

Jean throws the palaeontologist a bitter glare over his shoulder.

“ _What_?” he seethes, noticing that both Ymir and Krista have also stopped talking, and are both focussed on Jean unblinkingly (with Ymir’s grin being more wolfish, and Krista’s smile being more encouraging, but both being patronising enough for Jean to want to cower away).

“Costa Rican _Casanova_ ’s got a soft spot for you, man,” Eren lauds with a broad, unapologetic grin as he leans back against the fence next to Jean, his weight causing it to bow. “Weak at the knees. Totally sweet.”

“He does _not_ ,” Jean retorts sharply – more an involuntary reflex than anything, because it’s not the thought itself that repulses him, but the idea of Eren gawking over the intimacy that seems to exude from every single one of Marco’s pores. “Look, c’mon— the line is moving.”

Eren is fool enough to turn his head and look – gullible enough to take a moment to realise that the people in front of them are not, in fact, edging forward – but when he turns back to Jean, his smirk is wicked. 

“You sweet on him too, huh?” he quips evilly, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “Finally ready to get outta the lab and down and _diiiirty_ in the field, huh?”

Jean buffs Eren on the shoulder with a closed fist and an angry huff, his nose wrinkled and his mouth pulled up into a pucker – Eren yelps playfully and leaps away, beyond Jean’s reach, but doesn’t relent.

“Y’know we’re leaving in two weeks, right?” he jibes, arms folded across his chest. “What’cha gonna do about that, huh? Can’t just prance around it, man. You ain’t a _gallimimus_ , however much you might hope you are. You gonna let him sweep you off your feet?”            

It’s a dampener on Jean’s mood – which was already balancing precariously on a tightrope suspended over both mortification and irritation – but Eren’s teasing words feel like the bucket of a thunderstorm emptied ceremoniously over Jean’s head, extinguishing any heated humiliation and anger into clouds of white steam.

There are only two weeks left. (And then it’s Florida, and thousands of miles away from here.)

And all of a sudden, that doesn’t seem long enough – not for what he wants. _What does he want?_

Things are just starting to happen: the tingling in his fingers, and the palpable breaths that catch awkwardly in his throat. The cricket-like quiver in his heartbeat, and the excitement that runs freely through the coursing of his veins at the thought of something so shiny, and so new, and so … so _Marco_.

It’s only just beginning – whatever that might be – and even then, it feels all too cruel to have this blooming friendship be stripped like bark from a tree after so little a time span. Jean doesn’t like the thought of putting it all to bed in just two weeks – not when he’s … _feeling so free_. It’s so rare a thing. He’s never had something quite like this before; he’s never been so lucky with boys at home.

But shouldn’t he be putting it to bed – or at least stopping it all from germinating before it gets too late? Or maybe he should just let it run its course and have some _fun_ with it, because he’s allowed a bit of that, right? Maybe he should just leave it be, and pin it down in future journals as a holiday romance that almost was and could have been, but never quite surmounted to anything?

Maybe he should just put a cap on it. Because if there’s something Jean is certainly sure of (besides that he shouldn’t be asking Marco out on _dates_ and encouraging mangled messes of bashful glances) – and it’s cemented within himself as he levels his stare with Eren’s severe green one – it’s that he gets scared. He’s afraid of lots of things, and most of those involve being _hurt_.

(He doesn’t want to call it heartbreak, because it won’t be that – things aren’t that severe and deep rooted yet – but it’s going to bite. A sting. A _heartsting_ , if there is such a thing.)

Jean hadn’t thought about all that.

He is distracted as Ymir shifts her weight, jutting out one hip and resting her hands on her waist, flattening Jean with a disenchanted stare.

“Oh, you’re _so fucked_ ,” she says plainly. Jean can’t help but agree, even if he keeps his lips pressed into a tight line that he doesn’t dare let be prized open.

He didn’t sign up for this. He didn’t sign up for icky _feelings_. It’s all too complicated for him – numbers and graphs make more sense. Mixing chemicals is more logical. Calculating algorithms is what he knows.

He doesn’t know how to cope with the buds of _feelings_.

Two weeks is not long enough to _play it cool_ if he wants something out of this. ( _This_ , being the uncompromising need to scuff his feet in the dirt to avoid coy stares; and this being the feeling of his hands being guided by stronger fingers to feed the juveniles in the hatchery with a pair of tweezers; and this being the feeling of having someone open his eyes for the very first time, after growing too used to walking through life looking out upon the world through a squint.)

And at the same time, two weeks is too long a time to pretend like he doesn’t want anything. Jean’s good at giving the cold shoulder – but not _that_ good. Not when he’s already taste the inkling of a shameful and alien sort of addiction.

Jean reconsiders the thoughts he indulged only a week ago. Maybe he _is_ screwed.

 


	3. Eat Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some key, Costa Rican phrases:  
> "Por dicha": thank goodness.  
> "Soque": hurry up!  
> "Que m'iche?": what's up?  
> "No me digas!": no way!  
> "Me caes bien": I like you (I fell good for you).
> 
> Thank you for making it to the end! I'm not totally happy with the conclusion of the story, but I wanted to get the fic out as soon as I could; hopefully I can go back later and patch up the ending. Please enjoy the read, and let me know what you think! Comments are always loved and appreciated, and my Tumblr inbox is always open.

The first week rush doesn’t seem to die-down after Sunday rolls over to Monday, and the park is still just as cramped and congested as it was on opening day. Jean is kept just as busy by Levi’s demands, which have become less about the short man’s personal vindication, and more about the fact he’s evidentially stressed about the _InGen_ directors breathing down his neck about the _indominus_. His curt words and brackish hostility rub like sandpaper onto Jean’s skin, leaving him just as rough to the touch, both grumpy and abrasive, and entirely unable to focus on his work.

But it’s not just Levi that makes his head spin – although all the commotion over his research project is more than enough to do his head in and give him migraines for days should he pause to breathe – and Jean doesn’t try to lie to himself about it anymore.

The two week countdown weighs heavily on his mind, self-inflicted or not, and he can’t shake the feeling of a deadline looming for which he hasn’t prepared the necessary work. (If only he knew _what_ work that was. If only.)

At least Eren doesn’t tease him about it. That’s one good thing to balance the scales, even if Jean puts Eren’s distance down to the fact that the palaeontologist only needs to be in the same room as Jean to see how much he’s stewing.

Ymir is less considerate about it, and far, _far_ more terse – not more so than when she’s thrown back a few beers in the evenings and exhausted all the conversation about what dinosaurs she and Eren might have been studying that day – and Jean is her easiest target. (She gives Levi a run for her money in her hostility whenever someone tries to raise the question of her and Krista; to some extent, Jean would rather suffer her probing remarks about how he might or might not feel about Marco, instead of having her rip his head off.)

Ymir is only _one_ of the things that pulls and tugs at the loose threads of Jean’s countenance, the threat of being unravelled more irking than the actual pulling-apart. Jean has a scowl knitted into his forehead before he steps foot in the laboratory each morning, his feathers ruffled and his shirt rumpled by the crowds dodged and the milling of people who shouldn’t be out of bed so early when they’re on a damn _vacation_. He hates the noise that never quite dies away; he hates being woken up by the rumble of people in the street before his alarm clock each morning. He hates how tour groups tap on the glass when they’re told not to, and he hates the roar of the stadium when the _mosasaur_ leaps from the water and dives back down with a splash like the thunder of a jet engine.

Dinner and casual drinks and clandestine touches don’t happen – not with Marco.

It’s not that Jean doesn’t appreciate the company of Mikasa, or the ever-present energy of Eren and Ymir that never lets a moment go spare, but the few snippets of conversation that he does grab from Marco are not satisfactory enough for him, and yet still overshadow any of the other friendships he has managed to form despite his grumbling exterior by far. Jean catches himself unconsciously holding in his breath every time he runs into Marco, everything beneath his skin stone-still, as if a gentle exhale might have him toppling forward into the unknown and all the things he never signed up for.

It’s difficult to suffocate the craving for more – for more than the cheery, if whistle-blown _hellos_ thrown Jean’s way whenever he spots Marco running around the park, and the fragments of a conversation Jean manages to catch with slippery hands on the days that he tries to push his luck, and tell Levi that he needs to be out on the field with the palaeontologists for _research_.

Jean tries to reason with himself that it’s better this way. _This way_ , he can’t fall in any deeper, and if he tries hard, maybe he can wade towards the shallower waters still. At least the attachment won’t bloom into anything brighter, and he won’t find himself blindly stumbling off a sea-ledge that he cannot see, falling into some great, watery depth that he has no clue how to traverse.

He tells himself as much – but when Mikasa calls him to the hatchery one night as the shells begin to crack and splinter on a new batch of _triceratops_ ’ eggs, and Marco doesn’t drop by because his shifts won’t let him (despite the few text messages Jean throws his way), Jean realises that he doesn’t want to leave it like this.

But he stands in no stead that could _possibly_ ask Marco to come away from his herbivores – not for Jean. He understands how much the dinosaurs mean to Marco, and he also understands how much they _need_ him, especially with _InGen_ clacking at everybody’s heels. And he understands where he falls on the grand scale of things – because who could ever, _really_ compare to such magnificent creatures brought back from a sixty million year slumber?

Jean doesn’t, and can’t. He’s just a kid from Florida, up-to-his-waist in things too deep for him. He’s nothing special. He gets that.

 

* * *

 

Jean thinks it’s funny how torn he is over leaving. Not funny as in _he’s laughing_ – because it’s been far from that for the last few weeks, and he’s been entirely stony-faced for a long time now.

But funny as in he’s not really sure when his moth-eaten mattress in Miami stopped being a _welcome home_ , and became just a note on his list of replacements in need of doing upon stepping foot back in Florida. He’s not sure when he stopped being terrified of _everything_ , and his hotel suite and Mikasa’s dry humour and the rumble of the _triceratops_ in the paddock became something he will miss when he boards that plane home. He’s not sure when there became more reasons to want to stay than to want to go – and even his Netflix account back home is not as much a shining beacon for return as it was six weeks ago.

But he does miss his bed. And his laptop, and his television, and his friends. He misses the ease of Professor’s Hanji’s leadership, and the ability to put his feet up on his work bench and play on his phone when waiting for lab results to be paged through. He misses the work – which is something no self-respecting student would ever say about their grad school research project – but he misses not being kept in the dark about what he’s aiming towards.

He misses the thought of things being able to move forward. There is little of that to be found here – despite the sunshine and the tropical paradises and the _more-than-excellent_ pay checks – because an island is an island; water on every side. There is only so far he can go, and even for Jean and his love of things he can control, the thought of stagnating in a place so far from home is not something worth dwelling on.

Time passes too quickly, and it frustrates him because he doesn’t know which way he wants to move – only knowing that he _has_ to move, be it forwards or backwards. He stares at his boarding pass every night before he turns off the lamp, the slip pressed between two pages of his passport on his bedside table, and he memorises by rote the time of departure from the grassy landing strip of the island, the arrival time in Costa Rica, how long he has to kill at the airport in San José, and what time his flight to Miami boards – and it all only fuels the countdown timer ticking over inside his head.

He tries to keep himself busy; he agrees to Ymir’s demands to help her pick out a leaving present from the gift shops for Krista (although Jean can’t decide why she thinks Krista would appreciate anything dinosaur related when she works alongside them every day); and he accompanies Eren to the _velociraptor_ pen to appraise the training programme (and quietly criticise the involvement of the ex-Marines in the rearing of dinosaurs when they clamber back into the Jeep at the end of the day). He dithers with Mikasa in the hatchery, feeding the juveniles less likely to snap his fingers off with shreds of lettuce and kale, and not fighting the gentle smile that melts onto his features with the infants’ hungry cries. (He tries to ignore the glances Mikasa seems to throw his way when she believes he’s not looking – he hopes they’re just his imagination. He also hopes that Eren hasn’t been gossiping about him behind his back, but it seems futile. It’s oxymoronic to hope both things at once.)

Suddenly, there are three days until he flies, and he’s beginning to say his goodbyes.

He hasn’t seen Marco for the best part of a week, their paths having not crossed despite Jean’s best attempts to get out of the lab in his dwindling days.

And he doesn’t like to admit it, but it makes him _sad_. Not a great sadness to write home about, because he hasn’t entangled himself enough for it to really _kill_ when he begins to rip away, but it’s a blueness as choppy as the sea that never stills, and it makes him gloomy.

He drags his heels and he moves sluggishly around the lab, his penmanship scrawled and lazy as he files his final report with Levi – who even cracks some semblance of a satisfied smirk as his grey eyes flick over the manuscript of Jean’s work – and Jean wants nothing more than to spend his last few days holed up in his room trying to pack his busted, old suitcases with all the clothes he hasn’t yet managed to pull all the mud-stains from.

Ymir is having none of it. She says it’s just a few drinks at the bar – one of the ones that is less crowded by the tourists, and where the staff hold back a table for them if they ask. She says it’ll only be a beer or two – enough to give them a happy buzz and see them off, but not have them stumbling blindly into the _t.rex_ pen. She says a lot of things that Jean tries to brush off like dust from his shoulders, turning his back to her as she hangs from his doorframe like an overgrown monkey, suspended by her lanky arms as she swings back and forth, having come sauntering along the corridor for the sole purpose of bugging him. ( _It’s a leaving party_ , she insists. _Not a nuisance_.)

“You not want to say goodbye to everyone?” she pouts, and Jean’s shoulders fall with a huff as he tries to slam the lid on his suitcase, but it won’t snap.  “Not even Mikasa? Not even _me_?”

“We’re on the same plane home, idiot,” Jean retorts curtly, pressing his meagre weight down on the lid of the suitcase – which creaks and cracks painfully, but still doesn’t budge. He grumbles, and falls back onto his haunches on the floor, hands slapping his thighs in defeat.

He’s only made a few friends across the entire programme – it hardly feels worth dragging his sorrowful and miserable ass to a bar that he’s undoubtedly going to hate, and company he’s going to spend the whole night mulling over.

But he does want to say goodbye to Mikasa. She’s been a good friend – a real friend, and one that he would gladly keep in touch with upon his return to Florida. She’s no throwaway acquaintance like he intends for Ymir and Eren to be, and he has entertained the idea of how much his lab partner Armin would like her if they met.

“And if you don’t come, Eren’s gonna be on your ass like a raptor ‘til we leave,” Ymir laments with a crass shrug. “And on the plane. Think about it. Twenty thousand feet in the air, trapped in a tin can with Eren when he won’t shut up. D’ya really want to submit yourself t’ that? You wanna submit _me_ to that? Fuckin’ cruel.”

“You’ve got a point,” Jean mumbles, before looking back over his shoulder at where she loiters. “About Mikasa. Not about you. I don’t care about your suffering.”

Ymir’s grin is wolfish as she unlatches herself from the door, her strides long as she moseys up to Jean, a suffocated skip in her step. She jabs her bony fingers beneath Jean’s arms and hauls him to his feet with a squawk from his lips.

“Atta boy,” she smirks, “Let’s go get wasted.”

 

* * *

 

Jean’s not sure what constitutes a _green dinosaur_ cocktail, but it tastes like melon, pineapple juice, and dry gin, and it makes his toes curl as it’s pushed in front of him the moment he sits down in the bar. The alcohol makes the inside of his nose burn, far more acridly then the bitter flush of the beer or two he was expecting.

The bar is ridiculous. Jean’s eyes _scathe_ across the plastic jungle ferns that line the walls, and the animatronic _pterodactyls_ that fly in circles over his head as he clinks his glass with Mikasa and is prompted to take more than a sip of the vibrantly green cocktail.

There’s a whole group of them – not that Jean can really call them a _them_ when the only faces he recognises are few and far between, and the names he can place even sparser – crowded around a novelty table in the shape of an _ankylosaur_ in the back corner of the bar, squashed against floor-to-ceiling coverage of old Jurassic Park merchandise unearthed from the disaster site of twenty years gone. Jean eyes the old bumper of a Jeep sceptically, before his gaze roams to the collection of large, dagger-like teeth strung like a net between the candle lights upon the walls.

The conversation is already rattling – and rattling far away from what Jean can keep up with. Eren is across the table, surrounded by faces Jean doesn’t know, and embroiled in ecstatic and exuberant prattle that Jean only understands in snippets. Ymir is two seats from Jean’s left – Connie and Sasha are sandwiched between, both entirely covered in sandy dust and mud from their day shift, and both already half-way to plastered – and has Krista pulled into her lap, her attention devoted to nuzzling the clerk’s pale neck with peppery kisses that has Krista giggling and trying to push her away. For a moment, Jean is transfixed by the way the mud on Ymir’s work uniform rubs across Krista’s immaculately white skirt, leaving smears of chalky brown and yellow ingrained in the cotton, and then he’s fascinated by the way Krista’s hair seems ruffled out of place, her long-cut bob not so sleek and statuesque as the other times he has seen her around Ymir.

Jean is grounded by the feeling of Mikasa’s thigh pressing firm against his own from his right, and he turns back to her as she tries gently to grab his attention.

It’s hard to hear her over the bawdy and brackish chatter, the clinking of glasses and beer bottles on the table, and the laughter bubbling from Eren’s throat, so Jean leans in close as she presses into his ear.

“I didn’t think you would come tonight,” she says, “I’m glad you did though.”

“Thought it would be a good chance to say goodbye properly,” Jean lies, “Wanted to see everyone off, y’know? I’ll miss ‘em.”

“We’ll miss you too,” Mikasa replies, her thin hand on the back of Jean’s head, keeping him within range of her constrained voice. “Even Levi, believe it or not. He really likes you.”

“You shouldn’t joke,” Jean smirks wryly, “It’s damn scary. I don’t for a minute think he wouldn’t be pushing me outta here with a broom if he could.”

Mikasa leans back in her seat and laughs prettily, covering her mouth with her hand, the gin in her cocktail having already loosened her up. She’s almost drained the glass in her fingers, whilst Jean has barely had two sips of his. (He wants to make it last, he decides.)  

Mikasa finishes the last mouthful of her cocktail with a graceful gulp tipped down her throat. The glass tinkles when she props it back on the _ankylosaur_.

“Well, I will miss you for one,” she says sincerely, fixing Jean with a gaze that is strong and unwavering, yet kind. “I’ll make sure to ring you up when I’m back in America for Christmas. I’ve never been to Miami.”

“You’ll regret missing me when you see the state of my shit-hole apartment,” Jean confesses, “How does Christmas TV-dinner sound to you?”

Mikasa’s tight-lipped smile is genuine, and Jean thinks he sees her shoulders rise with a little laugh.

“It sounds wonderful,” she says, “Or at least better than another night of _Cretaceous burgers_ or room service pizza.”

She hops to her feet, still lithe and nimble as ever, yet popped with an alcoholic energy that she usually reserves when gliding around the lab. Jean watches her meander through the crowds of her friends – not his – towards the bar to get herself another drink.

He looks around the group again, noticing Ymir still with her face invested in Krista’s skin, and Connie and Sasha with their heads pressed together in giggles, and Eren talking rapidly with the burly blond keeper and the woman with the icy stare, over something that sounds like a triple-point score in _Scrabble_. Mikasa’s empty space, although still warm with her presence, sings out to Jean, longing to be filled.

Marco is absent, and Jean tries not to be disappointed. There are still people trickling in, despite how the bar staff are trying to fend off the tourists who still linger drunkenly on bar stools; Jean supposes that there are different opening hours for park employees. A couple of park rangers come trotting in and slip into the circle effortlessly, their khaki uniform blending in with their colleagues’ and their conversation instantly more casual that anything Jean has attempted to spit out in these last eight weeks.

He doesn’t know them – and wonders if even Ymir and Eren do, or if they’ve just heard about the party and come for the drinks. Jean wouldn’t blame them. (But he does question how well a hangover fares when you’re on _t.rex_ duty the next morning.)                                                                                                            

It’s not a leaving party for _him_ , not really. It’s a leaving party for Ymir and Eren, who have fallen in so seamlessly with the palaeontology, and the jargon, and the no-holds way of living that comes with shacking up in a field full of dinosaurs as if it’s the best damn thing in the world. Jean wishes he could say the same about himself – because then he could say all these people had come to see him off, and not just Mikasa, and Connie and Sasha, who might pity him more than anything. 

But he had hoped – a small or a big hope, he’s not really sure – that Marco would be there. That if there was one person he might count on to actually want to tell him a goodbye, it was him. That Marco might have come by to see _him_ first, and not Ymir and Eren and all the others. Just him. Just Jean.

Mikasa slides back into her seat, a cocktail in either hand; she sets one down next to Jean’s untouched glass, and takes a slurp from the other, before putting it on the table too. She nudges towards Jean’s drinks.

“You need to catch up,” she urges gently, “There’s no Levi to deal with tomorrow morning when you have a hangover, so no need to hold back.”

Jean smiles thinly, taking a larger gulp from his first glass, which he swallows acidly. The taste is too sweet; he’s never been a fan of melon.

Someone proposes a drinking game – it’s probably Eren, or one of the raptor keepers on the other side of the table – and Jean obliges as best he can, him and Mikasa struggling to pick up the slurred rules together.

He spares a glance over his shoulder as Ymir is forced to down her drink for not paying attention: the bar is empty now, save for them and the bar staff cleaning tables (who will ultimately gravitate towards them by the end of the night and become tangled in the chaos themselves), and Jean’s eyes fall on the door.

There’s still time. He can’t rule Marco out yet. He’s probably just busy.

Or trying not to get too close. That sounds like something Jean should be doing.

Jean feels uncertain. (But it’s nothing new.)

 

* * *

 

It gets late – but not late enough that Jean has given in and devoured both the cocktails placed in front of him. Everyone else has grown bawdy and boisterous, but Jean is quiet, his head far too sober to compete with the raucous laughter and singsong that surrounds him.

Ymir has her arms tightly wrapped around Krista, chin upon her shoulder, and is singing drunkenly in Creole a song that she claims her grandmother taught her when she was young – about finding love and happiness and merriment and adventure, and a home away from home. It’s all very touching, but she is too drunk and her slurred words carry little meaning when they cannot be understood or even deciphered.

Mikasa is talking to Connie and Sasha, leant across Jean’s space as she tries to make out the words they overlap with one another; but Jean stares at the ceiling, a haze all of his own that prevents him from treading water in their conversation.

He doesn’t have to think – not when there are _pterosaurs_ hanging from the canopy of nets and waxy ferns above his head, and he gets distracted in spotting the plastic dinosaur figurines tangled in the display for novelty effect. He tries to test himself: he wants to see how many he can name by eye. He wants to see how many more he has learned the names of since landing in that rickety plane two months ago with a suitcase full of disbelief. He scans the figures interwoven in the ceiling decorations, squinting to try and make out the little, plastic claws and tails that stick out through the loops in the net.

There’s less difference between then and now than he was expecting. _Tyrannosaurus_ and _stegosaurus_ were common enough words to him before, but at least he knows that he’s learned more _about_ them during his time on Isla Nublar.

He knows about the flocking of the _parasaurolophus_ , and the parental instinct of the _stegosaurus_ , and how many bones make up the tail of an ankylosaurs. He knows about the epoccipital frill of the _triceratops_ , and how it relates to finding a mate. He knows that the _triceratops_ shouldn’t eat Indian lilac, but enjoy palms and cycads above all else. He’s seen how a juvenile trike can still be recognised by its mother after weeks apart.

He’s learned a lot about the _triceratops_. More than any other dinosaur that Ymir or Eren has dragged him along to see, or that Mikasa has fed in front of him. It’s of no great surprise.

Jean wonders if he will forget, over time. He wonders if all that he’s learned will slowly be pushed out by his science, by his numbers, by his research proposals and his paperwork. He wonders if one day, he’ll be sitting in front of the mass spectrometer in his lab, and try to recall what sound an adult _triceratops_ makes when hungry, and he just won’t be able to remember. It will linger undoubtedly on the tip of his tongue, and in the peripheral of his mind, but he won’t ever be able to grasp it enough to remember that guttural groan again.

It makes him sad, in a way. Sad that it’s probably inevitable. _Sad_ that if he could forget the sound of a _triceratops_ , he might also come to forget the sound of a voice and the curl of a smooth, Spanish lilt.

He deflates to the melody of music that floats in the stiff and sticky air unlike a breeze: it is too heavy, too lethargic, even with its calypsotic reggae beat that really should be smoothing the creases in Jean’s brow to nothing. The cicadan hum of a bass guitar and the metallic echo of steel timpani is pleasant, but not moving enough – like elevator music that spins around and around and around into nothing—

Jean is vaguely aware of the front door of the bar slamming shut, but doesn’t tear his eyes from the ceiling – not until Eren lets out a mighty cheer, and Connie and Sasha both rip away from Mikasa’s conversation to spin around in their seats, crooning over whoever has just come through the door.

“Your spikey children keeping you busy?” Sasha laughs brightly. “You need to get a sitter!”

“Hell, man, you look crazy red!” Connie cackles, “Did you run all the way here? You have a Jeep, dude! Use up the gas that they’re buying for you!”

“How are the trikes doing?” Eren cajoles, before leaning across the table and gesturing to a spare seat on the other side of Mikasa. “Grab a chair, Marco.”

 _Ah_. Jean turns around slowly – although it feels very quick to him. Maybe the alcohol is finally getting to him – though if the near-full drink in his hand is anything to go by, that’s not the case. Alcohol is not meant to make his heart beat this fast.

His eyes meet with Marco’s instantly; his eyes are dark in the grimy, lucid light of the bar, near black in the gloom, but there is an edge of wildness, or manicness, or _something_ that matches the flustered colour of his skin and the rumpled state of his work uniform. His dark hair is unkempt, scraped back against his head one too many times and left to flop back into place across his forehead. On his lips is a smile, tugged up higher at one corner of his mouth than the other, pricking him with a mismatched dimple as a crescent in the field of his freckles.

Marco doesn’t tear his eyes away from Jean, melting in Jean’s honey-gold as if he has just stumbled out of the centre of a wild storm; he doesn’t even waver as he shoots cheery replies to the others. Jean can’t find it in himself to blink.

“Sorry I’m late,” Marco breathes, laughter airy and breezy in his tone. “There was something I had to sort out at the base. I hope I didn’t miss much.”

The others laugh – and Jean is near deafened by how Connie and Sasha bellow with _I told you so_ and _he can never leave those trikes alone_ – with Eren guffawing over the running joke that Marco treats his herd like his own children, rather than his job. Marco subsidises a polite chuckle, but shifts his weight almost nervously on his feet, the fingers of one hand fiddling self-consciously with the strap of his watch.

( _He’s not one to be self-conscious around his friends_ , Jean would note if he could access any semblance of brain function. _Why is he nervous?_ )

“Are you gonna sit?” Ymir asks, craning her head over the back of her chair lazily, “Or you gotta dash back to tend to your flock and were just visiting?”

Marco blinks, his gaze falling to the spare chair that Mikasa pats with a friendly hand, but he shakes his head. His shy chuckle turns bashful, but he musters up enough confidence not to duck his head when he speaks.

“Actually, I did hope that I could borrow Jean for a minute,” he admits, “If that is okay with everybody. I don’t want to steal him from his own leaving party.”

The table erupts into wolf-whistles and Jean feels something within himself physically shrivel up. He twists back to the table, throws the entire glass of _green dinosaur_ down his throat in one gulp, and pushes up from his seat without a flicker across his face (as Marco swats away Sasha’s grabby hands), and rolls his eyes at the lewd gestures being scattered his way from across the circle.

Jean feels small when he turns to Marco, chest to chest, as if the few inches of height difference between them has become a lot more than that. Jean would love to say that the burn of dry gin on the back of his throat gives him some sort of liquid courage – but the reality is a stomach that churns and a gut that twists, and an alarming absence of any tangible feeling that he can latch onto and cling to desperately.

Marco’s smile wobbles for a moment, as if he sees Jean’s reserve and he flashes with concern.

“Is that okay with you, Jean?” he says, his voice low. A twitch in his hand suggests that he wants to cup his palm around Jean’s shoulder, maybe slide his fingers down Jean’s bicep in reassurance, but they’re both acutely aware of the scorchingly expectant stares of their friends and colleagues.

Jean nods stiffly, nudging past Marco to the door.

“Yeah,” he says, “We should go outside.”

 

* * *

 

Jean hopes for it to be cooler once he steps out into the late night air, but there’s barely a temperature difference, and the humidity is still much the same. He picks at the neckline of his t-shirt, fanning it against his sticky skin to little relief.

Marco tosses a few, weary exclamations in thick Spanish back into the bar – which erupts with applause and laughter again – but lets the door fall closed softly behind him as he lets himself collapse against the novelty wood. He considers his feet for a moment, knocking his work boots together, and then glances up. Jean meets his eyes with a curiosity that twitches in time with the fraying of his nerves. 

Marco’s expression seems sympathetic and a little guilty as he nibbles the inside of his cheek.

“Are you sure that this is okay?” Marco prompts, something in his voice less artificial than when under the gaze of plastic dinosaurs. “I’m not interrupting you, no?”

Jean folds his arms across his thin chest securely and shakes his head.

“No,” he says, his voice croaking. He coughs lightly, and tries again. “N-no. No, it’s cool. I wasn’t really— _y’know_ — feeling it.”

The park is near empty at this hour, and yet everything is still lit up in the dark: a plethora of bright, white lights and neon signs that must have the generators running on maximum, leaving the promenade painted with the oddest of artificial glows – a strange, pale-yellow that almost mimics the light of the daytime, save for the length and the darkness of the heavy shadows hiding beneath benches and under the awning of folded parasols.

There are some stragglers on the streets – tourists who have cradled one too many margaritas and are stumbling back to their hotels, teenagers who have stuck away from their parents to stalk the boardwalk and the beach, and bedraggled park employees scuttling back from late night shifts to the safety of their beds.

But it’s mainly silent – even the rush of the sea, whilst enough to fade out any distant dinosaur calls, feels like an echo. The whisperings don’t settle Jean’s nerves. He feels unsettled by the quiet. (Because it reminds him that he hasn’t thought of what to say. If there’s anything _to_ say. He hasn’t even decided that much. It makes him feel like panicking.)

He decides to throw the question back at Marco, before his voice wobbles too much, and before the silence between them becomes too long and awkward.

“Is there something you wanted to say?”

“Well,” Marco says slowly, “There is somewhere that I want to _go_.”

Marco doesn’t have to say much: a nod of his head and a gentle shrug of his shoulders is enough for Jean to know to follow him, to whatever he has in mind. Marco slows his strides deliberately, matching each of his paces to Jean’s shorter ones, even glancing at their feet to make sure each of their steps are in time with one another.

Jean snorts airily at the gesture, which seems to prick and puncture some of the turgid quiet that envelopes them staunchly; Marco’s face warms with the curling of an intimate smile once more. Jean is glad of the dark when he feels his own face begin to heat up.

(He’s fucked. He really is. There was zero point denying any of it.)

(God help him.)

The stark light of the streetlamps somehow makes Jean’s footsteps fall silent upon his ears, but amplifies his breathing in place. Every rise of his chest sounds like a wheeze, and he really hopes Marco doesn’t stop and ask him if he’s having difficulty breathing.

Jean counts to five in his head, matching his exhales to each beat, and he likes to think that it helps to calm him down – but it would help _more_ if he knew exactly what it is that he is so scared of. (He can put a tack on the general idea of _why_ , but he needs more answers that an internal maelstrom of nonsense and pathetic fallacies.)

The night is blue with the glow cast by the aquarium that looms ahead of them, the acrylic jaws of a _mosasaurus_ forming an archway that spans the entrance of the lagoon. Jean hopes that it’s not where they’re heading – because he’s made a point to avoid the thought of _mosasaurus_ jaws, and he ruefully resents the roar of the stadium crowd during the feeding show – but Marco does not steer them away, making a bee-line for a staff door on the side of the building. 

“Really?” Jean admonishes as Marco unclips his ID from his breast pocket and waves it across the control panel beside the door. It bleeps with a green light, and a latch inside unclicks. Marco presses his shoulder against the door and it creaks, the cast iron heavy, but not too hefty a feat – the wry smile that he offers Jean, bordering on the mischievous _and_ the apologetic, does not falter with the weight.

(For a moment, Jean wonders if Marco has been entertaining the thought of feeding him to some Jurassic fish. Maybe he’s a sadistic murderer who butters up grad students over the course of their placement, only to toss them to the _mosasaurus_ when he has them wrapped unwittingly around his pinkie. They would never find his body.)

“Is this allowed?” Jean asks tentatively, glancing back over his shoulder cautiously for signs of park officials noticing them sneaking in to places Jean’s authorisation certainly doesn’t count. The street is barren, but Jean doesn’t want to linger in the eye of potential security cameras. He swallows his reservations haughtily.

“Is this _allowed_?” Marco mimics teasingly, holding the heavy door for Jean, who slips in beneath his strong arm. Beyond Marco is pitch darkness, and Jean’s eyes are immediately met with an impenetrable black. He takes a few steps forward, arms out and scrabbling for anything he might walk into, and then stops with the feel of linoleum beneath his feet. “How much do you want to know the answer to that question?”

“Not very much,” Jean admits lightly. His shoulder brushes against Marco in the dark, but neither of them startle. It’s reassuring – but doesn’t stop Jean from longing for something to grip in the blackness. “Can we put the light on, or is it better to murder me when I can’t see what’s coming?”

“No lights,” he hears Marco grin, “People will know that we are here. But I promise that I will not let you get eaten.”

Marco’s strong hands fall on Jean’s shoulders, and Jean prickles, his back hunching in surprise as Marco’s fingers press into his collarbones. Jean hears Marco’s breathy chuckle, but does not feel it on the back of his neck, figuring Marco is holding him at an arm’s length.

“I know the way,” Marco says, “Let me steer you. Try not to trip, okay?”

The linoleum descends beneath Jean’s feet as Marco pushes him forward, and they follow the downward slope of the floor, turning corners that Jean can barely see coming, for there is little light for his eyes to grow accustomed to. Marco laughs huskily every time Jean spits out a low curse at the feeling of something touching him in the dark, or every time his toes catch on something invisible and he threatens to stumble – and Jean would find it funny, or _endearing at least_ , if he weren’t crackling with so much pent-up voltage.

The blindness has him on edge, and the pressure of Marco’s hands squeezing and relenting upon his shoulders has him tipping _over_ that edge. He feels his palms begin to sweat, so he bundles his fists at his sides, knuckles as white as if ready to fight the dark.

The abyssal black bleeds with something blue – and Jean has to blink a few times to believe that he’s not imagining the change in colour that saturates the gloom before him. He glances down, able to make out the fuzzy shapes of his hands and feet, and hears Marco huff behind him, his fingers relaxing upon Jean’s clavicles.

“ _Aquí_ ,” Marco hums, guiding Jean around a corner towards the source of the pelagic blueness. “Here we are.”

A panel of glass opens up before Jean, so tall and wide that he cannot make out its edges in the dark. Beyond it, is water – thalassic and enigmatic – and of incomparable depth that it might as well be some deep sea trench, and not what Jean knows full-well is the _mosasaur_ lagoon seen from the underwater observatory.

Faint light filters through the calm water – from flood lights far above the surface maybe, or from the street lights of the promenade glimmering from over the stadium walls. The glow is entrancing – ethereal, magical, and almost enticing, if it weren’t for the fact that Jean is entirely aware of what dwells within the deep.

Marco releases Jean’s shoulders and drifts to his side, folding his own arms behind his back and rocking forward on the balls of his feet expectantly – he gazes forward, eyes flickering over the seascape of kelp-covered rocks and coral-like algae and powdery, white sand that lines the floor bed.

Jean spares a moment – or two moments, that could easily become an _infinite_ moment – to watch Marco’s face with the same admiration that Marco treats the water with; it’s easier to hide his fascination in the dark, but the dark also conceals the freckles that Jean longs to gaze upon.

Marco hums a low note, pressed out gently between his lips, that has Jean casting his eyes back into the water: an amorphous, black shape apparates from out of the blue gloom, growing larger and larger as it swims towards the glass with the languid, yet graceful weave of heavy flippers.

Jean tenses as the _mosasaurus_ wallows in and out of the dark, nearing the glass and then swimming away, time and time again. Its deep, barrel-like body could be mistaken for the shape of a submarine, or a whale lost without song – and Jean would say that there’s something quite melancholy about its lonely dance, if only he could sympathise with something with that many _teeth_.

“She’s pretty, no?” Marco says, nudging Jean in the shoulder with his own, the starchy fabric of his uniform sleeve rough against Jean’s bare skin. “They treat her like a circus animal most of the time, but this is how I think she is meant to be seen.”

“I think I would appreciate it more if I didn’t know that she would eat me given the chance,” Jean admits crassly. Marco scoffs, and shakes his head.

“She doesn’t … _choose_ to eat you,” he chuckles softly, “It’s just like— _uh_ — if you are in her pool, it’s gut instinct, you know? Just biology. She needs to eat you to live.”  

Marco approaches the glass – where Jean’s legs are reluctant to carry him – and raps his knuckles against the pane. The noise is solid – not hollow and echoic, and not reverberating like ripples into the water. His smile is cheeky when he faces Jean again, gesturing for him to come closer despite Jean’s blanch.

“The glass is mixed with— ¿cómo se dice?— _acrílico_? Acrylic? Yes, it’s very strong,” he explains, “And it is very dark. She has bad eyes, so she cannot see us. You are very safe. I promised you wouldn’t be eaten.”

Jean approaches the tank gingerly, transfixed and moved by the vastness of the water that encapsulates them, and the vastness of the creature that vanishes once more – and how _insignificant_ both he and Marco are, compared to both those things. They are little more than a blip in the ocean.

Marco reaches out for Jean’s arm, curling his palm around Jean’s bicep and guiding him to the glass. He hands skims the length of Jean’s arm, raising each and every fine hair on Jean’s skin, and then he moulds Jean’s palm against the transparent acrylic, making sure to press his fingers flat against the window into the gloom.

Marco presses him own palm flat beside Jean’s, his pinkie grazing Jean’s thumb with deliberate tenderness, and they stand for a moment in the thick and aquatic silence, side by side with hands outstretched, staring into the great depths of water.

The glass is cool to the touch, and it sucks away some of the heat that has been pooling in Jean’s extremities and burning him up like a slow-boiling fire, leaving his blood just simmering, and his cheeks flushed with a dusting. He arches his fingers, squeaking them down the glass, creating five, warm paths of condensation in his wake.

Marco grins, and leans forward to blow a patch of warm air onto the glass, which fogs up in a cloud of condensation. His index finger squeaks as he writes upon the glass: _me caes bien_.

“What does that mean?” Jean asks inquisitively, causing Marco to duck his head with an embarrassed huff. He breathes again upon the glass, erasing his first message, and draws a crude sketch of a fish.

“Just a saying from back home,” he admits softly.  “You know how it is.”

Jean scowls playfully and runs his fingers across Marco’s drawing, striking through the fish’s eyes with a long smear. Marco snorts abruptly, and wipes his hand across the drawing entirely, erasing it completely.

He turns around and leans his back against the glass, his gaze growing long, and his hands fiddling with the buckle of his belt. Jean finds his hands enthralling, magnetised by his deft fingers picking at the scabby leather, and he is distracted away from the watery void and the thought of the _mosasaurus_ spying on such an intimate moment.

Marco’s body language is very … _fragile_. Jean’s not used to seeing him skittish – not when he’s usually irradiated with Spanish confidence and a cheer to rival the strength of the tropical sun. But Marco switches his gaze between the floor and the ceiling multiple times, letting his head thunk back against the glass as he tries his hardest not to wring his hands. Jean would tell him to _stop and spit it out_ , if he only had more confidence in his own voice. He fears it would only be a squeak.

Marco fingers dance across the pockets of his khaki shorts more than once – and Jean notices – but each time his seems to consider delving into his pocket, he withdraws his hand and returns to fiddling with the leather belt lashed around his hips.

He seems to find some gall when Jean shifts to lean against the glass too, and Marco is drawn from whatever turmoil has sucked him in and reminded of the real world in a sprite moment.

“I’m sorry that I was so late today,” he says quickly, the words whistling from his lips. He runs a hand through his hair – a sign of embarrassment – and Jean wonders why. “I, uh— there was this thing that I to finish, and I, uhm—”

“It’s alright,” Jean shrugs. He feels like there’s more to say, but _you didn’t have to come_ feels out of place and abrasive, and _you came anyway_ feels too personal for him to be comfortable with. Jean understands how busy Marco is, and he understands how tightly woven his heart is to his _triceratops_. He knows his place. And so he stays silent.

“No, no,” Marco corrects, gesturing vaguely with his hands as he tries to gather the words in English, “I had to— _uhm_ — how do I say this? I have … a gift for you.”

It’s not what Jean expects to hear, and his mouth drops open in a small, round _o_ -shape.

“ _Oh_.”

“B-but it wasn’t ready, which is why I was late,” Marco stammers, flattening his hand against his thigh pocket, before dipping his fingers in and grabbing something small in the cup of his palm.

“It’s from _la gordita_ , when she was a baby,” he continues, unfurling his fingers as he presents his hand to Jean. There’s a thin, leather bracelet in Marco’s palm, and what looks like a small, ceratopsid incisor is woven into the band with two strands that are drilled through the enamel.  “She knocked it out when she was only a week old, so I stole it from her pen when she was sleeping. I kept it for a long time, but … I didn’t know what to do with it, until now.”

“ _Oh_.”

Jean’s muteness sparks a flash of mild panic across Marco’s features – fortunately diluted by a more concentrated amusement that begrudges his lopsided smile – but it stamps out the stammer in Marco’s voice, replacing it with something for more curt.

“Can you say anything that isn’t _oh_?”

Jean chokes.

“Y-yeah,” he croaks. “Yep. Uhm. Yeah.”

Jean’s not sure why he does it, but he extends his wrist to Marco – who stares at his hand for some, _audibly_ silent moments until he speaks tentatively.

“Can I— is it okay if I … you know—?” he falters, “Put it on for you?”

Jean nods when he cannot speak. His eyes fixate on Marco’s fingers – clumsy now, and not those deft ones that Jean did admire – as he untangles the band and holds it out flat for Jean to lay his wrist upon.

Marco’s fingers are calloused, and rough upon Jean’s pale, milky skin. It makes Jean think of all the days Marco has spent working in the field; all the palms he has laid on the flanks of sedated _triceratops_ ; all the weeds he has pulled and the cage bars he has lifted; all the work he has done. Jean is blemishless in comparison, but not in a way that feel good to him. He wonders what his skin must feel like to Marco, whose fingers skim gracelessly across Jean’s wrist as he ties the leather band, which is so comparatively smooth and devoid of any sign of _real_ hard labour.

He wonders if Marco shares the flicker of a ruddy thought that passes across his thoughts: of how fingers would feel against places that _aren’t_ wrists. Jean wonders if Marco fantasises about smooth fingers in the same way that Jean catches himself envisioning muddy kisses.

( _Don’t. Don’t go there._ )

When it comes to fight or flight, Jean only knows how to back away into the furthest corner; he does what he does best, and lets his hand fall when Marco releases it. From the corner of his eye, he inspects the way the _triceratops_ ’ tooth looks against the blue veins of his wrist, but if he brings himself to mention it – if he can’t bring himself to stay on the straight and narrow – he’s going to wind up saying things he will regret in two days when he’s on the plane.

“The … the juvenile,” Jean stammers, his steering of the subject painfully awkward and obtuse. “How’s she doing? Recovered … good, yeah?”

Marco tries to hide his disappointment, but not even the pale gloom can conceal it entirely. He was hoping that Jean wouldn’t do this – Jean’s gut tells him that much, what with how it twists – but Jean gets terrified so damn easily. (He just resents the fact it presents itself as clear as fucking _day_ on his face.)

“She is … _good_ ,” Marco says, his tone subdued, “Very good. I think there is no permanent damage.”

Jean nods slowly.

“She’s gone back to the rest of the herd yet, or—?”

“Yes. She went back to the herd last week. There were no problems.”

“That’s good,” Jean says, unable to prevent his other hand from straying curiously to his wrist, his fingers tracing the outlines of the woven leather. He knows that Marco notices. “I, uh— I guess I’m gonna miss the little trike. Urban foxes just aren’t the same.”

 “When is your flight?”

Whilst Marco’s tone is not curt, it’s _direct_ enough to surprise him, and make him realise that Marco doesn’t want to play Jean’s game of beating around the bush.

“D-day after next,” Jean murmurs, “Lunch time. Means I’m back in Miami by … by night fall.”

“I will try to catch you before you go,” Marco says thoughtfully, his words hushed, “Maybe I can sneak away and see you at the airport, if that’s okay?”

Jean would tease him about it: his willingness to steal away from his _horned children_ and see Jean off from the runway. He would joke about how he’s moved up the ranks and replaced the _triceratops_ at the top of the pecking order for Marco’s attention. He would laugh about it if he didn’t feel so small and shrunken and out-of-place.

“And maybe,” Marco continues, his words quick, “You can text me when you are in America? Or I can e-mail you, or write some letters to you, even if the mail is not very good here and it takes a few weeks for the post to reach—”

“’Course,” Jean stammers, his voice shaking, “Of course. Yeah, that’d be … that’d be really great.” He’s pinching at the skin on his wrist now, wriggling his fingers beneath the leather bracelet and feeling the rough edge of the tooth against the pad of his thumb.  “Maybe I’ll be able to save up enough cash after graduation to get a plane ticket or something. Be nice to come back.”

It feels forced the moment he says it – forced and unrealistic. It’s not like he’s going to have a few hundred dollars spare when he leaves university; everything he has is going back into repaying his loans. And then there’s food, and heating bills, and electricity for his apartment, and—

Marco slides down against the glass, his back squeaking as he drops to the floor. Jean glances down at him – it’s the first time he’s been taller (but not exactly _felt_ taller) – and Marco pats the floor beside him.

Jean spares an incredulous glance through the glass, but the great cavern of water is seemingly empty, devoid of any monstrous, black shapes that might sneak up upon them with their backs to the sea.  He obliges, slinking down onto the floor next to Marco, but taking care not to let their shoulders brush. Jean holds onto that chasm of gratuitous space like a life-line.

“I would like very much to see America one day,” Marco confesses, leaning his head back against the glass and presenting his face to the ceiling absorbed by the dark. The blue light of water rolls like water across his features, mapping the contours like waves sloshing over rocks, yet not breaking into sprays of white foam. The shadows dance and waltz across his cheeks, and Jean wonders if the waxing and waning glow presents himself so favourably in return. “I have never been.”

“That’d be great,” Jean agrees with a playful scoff, “If you’re cool with dealing with my lumpy couch and grotty apartment, ‘course. Probably best not to come in the summer though, ‘cus the air con likes to cut out if you don’t kick it enough; but then again most of the good stuff to do is closed in the winter, so—”

Marco leans into the space between him and Jean, encouraging Jean to keep speaking with the offer of an ear willing to listen to him ramble. Jean’s eyes instantly fall to his mouth.

“—but there are some nice … nice _gardens_ and shit, and the seaquarium, but I guess that’d be a bit lame, or we could catch a game, or the beach, or—” Jean pauses for a moment, letting out a shaky breath. “But I guess it’d all be pretty boring compared to the dinosaur life, right?”

“It does not sound boring to me.”

They are very close – and there is no long any water or any darkness, just Marco’s lips and Marco’s eyes and Marco’s presence as he has leant in very close, and Jean has turned to meet him in the middle, whistling over a hiss of caught breath. Their foreheads are almost touching. Marco’s gaze is tender, _curious_ , upon Jean’s lips, and there’s a question in his eyes in the darkness. So close. So very close.

And if he weren’t leaving in two days, Jean would let it happen.

It could be as easy as breathing. He could just tip forward, fumbling in the gloom with hot breaths and clumsy lips, and put to rest all his questions about dusty kisses.

He sees Marco’s fingers itch, creeping forward towards Jean’s hand splayed on the floor, and he wants to – he wants to forget how to care about everything that’s significant. He wants to be lost for a moment, and be okay with plunging into something he can’t control, because he doesn’t _need_ to control it. He’s tired of being an observer; reading and researching about the things he wants to know. He’s tired of being able to melt into a corner of a room and become invisible. He wants to let go.

But thoughts of half-closed suitcases and the passport on his bedside table pervade his thoughts like a duster in a room full of cobwebs, and he’s back to being a scared little boy. (Scared of the duster or the cobwebs? He cannot say.)

He knows he would get over it in a few weeks or months. He knows leaving would only sting for a little while, and then things would cool, and things would drift apart, and things would be fine once more.

And he knows, just as much, that he fears the heartache period just enough to cloud that judgement.

Jean ducks his head and scoots back against the glass, and Marco understands – Marco _knows_ that Jean is pulling away – and he doesn’t try to push any closer. If it stings, he does a good job of not letting it show.

“Are you going to miss it here?” Marco asks. Jean knows he doesn’t deserve any semblance of a lie.

“Yeah. Yeah, a whole lot.”  

 

* * *

 

They linger in the aquarium a while longer, the dark filled by breaths that sometimes tremble a little too unforgivingly, until Marco leaps to his feet and extends Jean a hand and a smile he’s not sure he deserves.

Marco knows all the fish in the aquarium by name, of course – even if they’re not the four-legged herbivores that he loves so much – and he guides Jean through the maze of fish tanks as if leading a man to water; Jean makes sure to trace Marco’s step religiously, taking care not to clip himself on any corners that he cannot see.

Marco understands that Jean doesn’t want to talk about leaving, and Jean supposes that the sentiment is shared. Marco doesn’t ask Jean about the things he will miss, and Jean doesn’t mention his suitcase, or Miami, or the plane. He in content enough to listen to Marco’s anecdotes about the Jurassic marine life that looks more like misshapen rocks than things with flippers, and indulge in Marco’s encyclopaedic knowledge about the corals and kelps that sway with the artificial currents swirled by the tank filters.

The night seems somehow brighter when they finally find the door again – as if all the stars are torchlights in the dark, and the radiance of neon lights and streetlamps seeps into the sky as a faint shade of orange in the centre of a vast, black blanket that stretches far out to sea in all directions.

Marco leaves Jean at the door to the hotel, despite Jean’s shy question as to whether Marco wants to come up to his room, and the unspoken statement that Jean doesn’t yet want to be alone.  Marco declines – because it’s the proper thing to do – and they part with wobbly smiles that try too hard to be reassuring when neither of them feels as if it can be believed.

Jean doesn’t try to finish packing or shut his suitcase that night; he kicks off his shoes against the wall, and flops down upon the bed like a dead man. He stares at the bracelet strapped to his wrist until he falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

Most of the tourists on the island arrive by boat: enormous, skulking, white ferries that tower over the port of Isla Nublar like battleships or floating cities – so the island’s air field is much as Jean remembers it from eight weeks ago.

There’s no check-in line to wait in, and no baggage carousel to fling his luggage onto in the blind hope that it makes it to his destination. The airport is little more than a barn of corrugated iron on the outskirts of the island village, manned by a few, sleepy looking staff members in fluorescent jackets and radios lashed to their hips. Krista drives him, Ymir, and Eren out to the air strip in her Mercedes, although rather than asphalt, it’s little more than a grassy field of a runway, upon which a small passenger plane thrums its propeller engines.

Eren and Jean collapse onto their suitcases at the edge of the runway at the first opportunity, baking in the last stretches of hot sun that they might absorb, and waiting for the arrival of the pilot and the crew to fly them back to Costa Rica.

Eren dozes in the midday heat, eyes closed lazily and grumbling snores rumbling from his chest as he slumps on the grass, head resting on his over-sized rucksack. It’s the sensible thing to do, Jean decides, as he slips his sunglasses over his nose, because the very real alternative is watching Ymir attempt to eat Krista’s face as aggressively as any _t.rex_ or _velociraptor_ Jean has seen these past two months.

“Get a room,” Jean grumbles; Ymir answers by flashing him her middle finger over her shoulder, but not unwinding her arm from Krista’s waist, and certainly not letting her lips go unattended for more than a splinter of a second.

Jean both envies her and does not, for a simple enough reason. He wonders how they’re going to cope with Krista here, and Ymir in Yale for the next few years whilst she finishes grad school. He wonders if Ymir will apply for a job in the Park once she’s done, or if Krista might quit work on the island and move to the States. He wonders if it will last the distance and the time. (He hopes it does. He’s not so bitter as to wish that misery on someone, even if that someone is as obnoxious as Ymir.)

He _envies_ her because she has someone to kiss on the runway.

Jean glances at his watch, which is on the same wrist as Marco’s bracelet. He expects the cabin crew will be boarding them soon, and the palm trees of Isla Nublar will become a memory replaced by the chalky-bright apartment buildings of San José on the mainland.

Although Marco made no promise to him, Jean hopes that he manages to keep it none the less. He suffers the public display of affection between Ymir and Krista for sake of glancing over their shoulders, towards the plastic barriers that guard the air strip, in the hope that he might see someone vaulting over them soon.

 

* * *

 

There’s no hold for their luggage in a plane so small; Jean watches disinterestedly as he hands his suitcase over to the cabin crew – a crew of just one stewardess in creaseless, blue uniform and a smear of bright red lipstick – who stashes it in the back of the plane, behind the few rows of seats. Eren hands his luggage over too, and Jean remarks on the stewardess’ grimace as she hauls Eren’s hold-all up the stairs, wondering if Eren’s stashed some bones, or even worse, a live dinosaur in his bag to take home. (Eren doesn’t deny it out-right, making Jean wonder if he’s in for a particularly rocky flight that might involve being munched on in mid-air.)

It’s impossible to pull Ymir and Krista away from one another, so Jean and Eren steal Ymir’s bags from her feet and pass them onto the stewardess with wry smirks and rolls of their eyes. Ymir’s rucksack has seen far better days – both holey and moth-eaten, the straps tangled and the canvas ripped in places where dust and dirt has collected over the weeks and months – and Jean almost laughs aloud when the captain and the co-pilot roll up to the cockpit with their pristine, drag-along suitcases-on-wheels, which not only match, but are colour-coordinated with their blue uniforms. Jean can’t help but wonder if the entire budget for the airline was spent on outfitting the crew with brand-spanking new uniforms, rather than on the plane itself, which is just as much a rust-bucket as Jean remembers from the flight over.

He and Eren sit on the stairs that unfold from the plane door as the co-pilot walks the length of the aircraft a few times, and then disappears into the cockpit to fiddle with some dials and gages, whilst the captain flirts horrendously with the stewardess, much to Eren’s amusement and Jean’s chagrin. Ymir and Krista are talking in hushed tones now, noses pressed together as Ymir holds Krista’s delicate face between her large palms, brushing her thumbs across Krista’s cheeks. Jean can’t help but feel a little tense at the sight, the thought of what words of parting Ymir must be whispering making his throat feel tight.

Krista kisses Ymir sweetly on the mouth, and then pulls away with a serene smile that masks expertly anything she might be feeling underneath. She says something to Ymir, and then offers Jean and Eren a perkier smile of pearly whites and a wave of her dainty hand. Jean offers her a raise of his hand, and Eren mocks a playful salute, and then she turns on her heels and walks back towards her Mercedes, parked a little way of the runway. Ymir’s shoulders slump, and she remains with her back to the plane for some moments after the white car has left the airstrip, remaining focussed on the invisible, but not intangible wake that it leaves.

When she finally turns to face Jean and Eren, with a last ditch attempt to wipe her eyes on the back of her hand as she does, her crooked smile is sombre, but sentimental. Her brash demeanour shines through the cracks well enough, and Jean breathes a quiet sigh of relief he didn’t realise he was holding.

“Shall we get this show on the road?” she grins weakly, a lope in her step as she saunters towards them. “Or this plane in the sky, I guess.”

Eren stretches out upon the metal steps, rolling his shoulders and creaking his joints as he extends his arms and his legs forward simultaneously, like a reclining cat. Jean remains coiled up, knees pressed to his chest, folded in on himself.

“Sounds like they’re ready to fly,” Eren says, cricking his neck. “Just waiting for your gross ass to stop with the sloppy smooching. Woulda just run you over with the plane if it weren’t illegal.”

Ymir sticks her tongue out at Eren as he pulls himself to his feet, and she boulders past him on the steps, pushing into the cabin with an overly dramatic huff, and a jibing, “Well, we know which one of us is _getting any_ , Eren. And it ain’t you.”

Eren grumbles loudly, before turning back to Jean.

“You coming, or are we leaving you here?”

The sigh that deflates in Jean’s chest is accepting and forgiving, and it seems to solidify something in his feet that gives him the strength to stand and turn away. He tries to pin-point the feeling of the sun glaring down upon his back, and the rush of the sea just over the fence, and how the wind sounds in the palm trees, rustling their raffia leaves. He tries to remember how to close the door on something that he never thought about opening. He doubts he’ll be back here; he doubts he’ll ever see—

“Oh, hey!” Eren calls out, springing away from the frame of the metal door. He pushes his sunglasses up into his hair, and Jean sees wild surprise burst in his sea-green eyes as he fixates on something approaching quickly behind Jean. “Well, isn’t _this_ some movie shit.”

Jean twists to look over his shoulder, catching from the corner of his eye the shape of a person leaping over the barriers at the edge of the airstrip, and then come jogging across the close-shorn grass towards the plane which has started to whir.

Jean is not even surprised – the noise that catches in his throat is something like a scoff and something like shameless relief, and he shakes his head. He’s only obtusely aware of Eren ducking back inside the plane; Jean hops back down the few steps of the stairway to find his feet upon soil once more, one last time.

“You’re real good at being late, y’know!” he calls out, a smirk pulling up the corners of his lips. There’s something about the eleventh hour that means he cannot feel anything else. He’s thankful for it. He wants to part in happiness.

Marco slows his jog as he nears the airplane, and Jean notices the smears of field dirt fresh across his uniform, and the mud caked under his short nails. He notices the red exertion hot in Marco’s face, and the sheen of fine sweat across his forehead, mingling with swipes of grim where he has run the back of his hand across his brow. He’s breathing heavily when he finally comes to a stop in front of Jean, and doubles over with his hands staunchly gripping his thighs – but he finds Jean’s expectant eyes in a moment, and not the floor.

“ _Lo siento_ ,” Marco breathes, “I’m sorry I’m late, but there was a problem with the _parasaurolophus_ family this morning, and then – _madre de Dios_ – one of the _triceratops_ was _missing_ , and—” Marco breaks off midsentence with a heavy puff of breath, and he shakes his head voraciously. “I’m sorry, no— _no importa_.  It doesn’t matter. I wanted to be here to see you go home, but maybe I am too late to say everything that I wanted to say.”

Jean leans against the handrail of the stairs, folding his arms baitingly across his chest. He licks his lips and bites the inside of his cheek, but it doesn’t satiate the wolfishness of his own smile.

“You better give me the short version, then,” he jibes.

Marco opens his mouth, as if he has the world to say and the world to tell – but then he closes it just as quickly, clamping his lips tightly shut. The ease in his expression snags on something Jean doesn’t like.

“¿ _Cómo puedo hacer eso_?” Marco murmurs sombrely, the four words mingled with a breath that would have Jean nearly miss them. The implication is enough for him to understand, even if the words themselves fall upon deaf ears; Jean feels momentarily guilty for asking for something he himself cannot deliver either.

(Hell, at least Marco _has_ things he wants to say. Jean doesn’t even have that, let alone a snappy version.)

Eren or someone bangs loudly on one of the plane windows. Ah. They don’t even have time for the snappy version.

Jean decides he has to be the one to suck it up, or he will be here until the end of time, or possibly longer, trying to get his thoughts in gear.

“Well,” he shrugs, hoping Marco doesn’t notice the leaden stiffness in his body, “Don’t get yourself eaten, alright? One day those trikes might decide not to be … so herbivorous anymore.”

Marco flashes a smile that seems both saddened and relieved for the fact Jean has forgiven him for not being able to produce the words that sit on the back of his tongue like a bitter taste. (It really doesn’t matter that it’s a flavour that stings Jean anyway.)

“I doubt that would happen,” Marco quips softly, “But I will remember just in case.” He takes a step towards Jean – no time for gingerness or shyness – and extends a hand. “I hope that your flight is safe. I am glad to have met you, Jean.”

Jean takes his hand, and Marco’s long fingers brush knowingly over the bracelet on Jean’s wrist. Jean’s grip is weak where Marco’s is strong, but Jean’s eyes are unwavering as Marco’s focus is delicate upon their clasped hands, memorising the way smooth fingers feel against callouses, Jean is sure.

“You will try to keep in touch?” Marco prompts, and Jean has to nod when he can’t summon confidence in his words. “ _Bien_. Good. I will miss you.”

“I’m gonna miss you too.”

 

* * *

 

Jean tells himself not to look back at he climbs the stairs into the cabin. He tells himself not to excavate that hole within himself now – because he will have plenty time to search for fossils within his chest in the coming days and weeks and months – but he looks back as he’s boarding the plane none the less.

Marco waves at him cheerfully, and then he’s sprinting away from the airstrip as Jean is nudged away from the door by the stewardess wanting to pull up the stairs, and Ymir complaining for him to take a seat, and the pilot instructing all seatbelts to be fastened.

Jean picks a window seat, and fixes his hands and forehead against the glass as he searches for Marco’s figure at the barriers, still waving in earnest.

Jean’s bones turns brittle, petrifying like millennia-old wood unearthed from deep unground. He feels weight on his shoulders like ages of soil and rocks and sand pressing down upon him, compressing him and threatening him with pulverisation; he feels breakable. He pulls down the blind on the window – despite the glare he receives from the stewardess strapped in at the front of the galley aisle – and adopts the brace position, even though they’re not crashing.

He needs to forget. It’s not like anything even _happened_ that needs forgetting. It should be easy. The sooner it goes away, the better. _Please_.

 

* * *

 

It’s not difficult for Jean to pick up the threads of an old life, even if he deigns to call it an _old life_ when he was only away for a meagre two months of the bigger picture. (Two months were enough, however, to have him second guess the password to his university e-mail, and stand dumbly at his front door trying to remember where he last put his spare key. Two months were enough to pretend otherwise.)

He settles back into grad school with a practiced ease that should surprise him – or surprise the person he thought he had become, with a looser grasp on boundaries and boredoms – but he moulds back into the yellow plastic of the stools in Hanji’s laboratory seamlessly, and the dent in his mattress still fits him well when he lays down to sleep each night. Hanji and Armin are both more than eager to be regaled with stories of Jean’s experience, gawping over the few photographs he snapped whilst he was there, and pawing over the few files Jean failed to delete from his memory stick of the work he did; but even as he speaks, it feels like he’s reciting the words from the rear of a postcard, and not reliving them as vividly as he might have hoped. He feels his memories of Isla Nublar are sanguine and fading already, and his enthusiasm seems to simper for every time Professor Hanji asks him to tell them about the _ankylosaurs_ again.

It feels almost as if he’s reciting something he saw on television, and not something he lived for eight weeks – the stories feel forced in his throat when Hanji calls him into their office most evenings, leant forward in earnest over their desk as they prompt Jean to tell them more, and they scribble furiously every word into the beat-up journal they keep in their lab coat pocket. The zeal is tasteless on his tongue when Armin asks about the people Jean met, the supervisors worked under, the friends made; it’s the normalcy of the life returned to, and the streets of the city, and the bustle of busy people that has become a cleanser on Jean’s palette and dulled the flavour. He’s no more reminded of that fact when he’s sat on the couch of his apartment one night, a Chinese takeaway unfinished on the coffee table before him, and a commercial for Mr. Masrani’s _experience of a life time_ flashes across the screen – and Jean feels so _detached_. Sirens reverberate his windows, the thin glass seemingly flexing with the boom of the city nightlife that cannot be escaped in this part of the ever-luminescent downtown, and Jean feels a lifetime away from palm trees on the beach, and brachial ferns, and the sound a ubiquitous call being the only thing to hollow out the darkness.

The memories are like airplane luggage; there’s a weight limit on how much he was able to take with him. (It doesn’t matter where he’s going, or for how long. He’s only allowed one suitcase for the hold, and a backpack to carry on.) Each bag contains only a few, incorporeal fantasies, and maybe he’s lost a sock along the way, or come home with slightly less than he departed with – and yet he still has to make these dazed and disoriented recollections last.

There is one thing that reminds him that it wasn’t some fever dream – and it’s a remark that Professor Hanji makes when he stumbles into the lab one summer morning, about his attire. He hadn’t thought about it at all when pulling out a long-sleeved shirt and a sweater from his closet, but Hanji laughs gutturally at the thought of Jean finding the Floridian weather _cold_. (At least the fact that his _body_ had acclimatised to the tropical temperatures of Costa Rica is reassuring proof for Jean that it all actually _happened_. That, and the woven bracelet he has yet to remove from his wrist.)

School keeps him as busy as he could want, and the cushion of the pay checks earned under _InGen_ allow him to splash out on a more exciting brand of instant ramen noodles than usual. He hopes that the money will keep him afloat for the rest of the summer without having to get a job on top of his studies, and he allows himself to reluctantly relish the free time he has that is devoid of job-hunting stress.

He keeps in contact with Ymir and Eren, begrudgingly at first – because one of the first things he’d found when returning home from the airport was a Facebook friend request from both of them in his inbox – but then more willingly as the weeks pass. Their messages are sporadic, but Jean unwittingly clings to the nostalgia that they both bare every time one of them reminds him of some anecdote from their travels together.

Marco’s emails are rare too, but they do appear in Jean’s inbox every so often. At first, they’re three or four times a week, with Marco clearly trying his hardest to access the internet in between shifts – but as the summer burns on, it’s Jean who begins to pin his hopes to the one correspondence that slides his way late every Sunday night. It’s not much – and at the end of the day, he never expected it to ever _be_ much – but it still makes his heart lurch every time he sees unread mail in his inbox.

There’s no dousing Marco’s enthusiasm for hearing about Jean’s life: Jean’s apartment, Jean’s grad school, Jean’s laboratory – hell, even what shows Jean has been watching on TV that Marco’s undoubtedly never even heard of – but Jean feels stretched by every word. Pulled too thin, and dragged out until his fingers are aching with elastic potential and the knowledge that he doesn’t want to be tugged any further – because he knows the day he snaps is either going to be the day he realises how much it _hurts_ to have not done anything, or the day he realises he doesn’t care anymore.

He knows which one he’s more scared of. (He thought it would be easy to forget, but it’s not. He begins to grumble every time he sits down in front of his computer to type out a reply, but not because he’s reluctant or resenting. It’s because he’s angry at himself for not realising what a pathetic hold he has on his own self.)

Jean also knows which one he _longs for_. He just wants the candle he holds hesitantly against his chest to burn out already. It’s been days since he left. And then it’s been weeks. Then more.

Most of Marco’s emails come with picture attachments – usually blurry things from his cell phone, and usually chronicling the development of the juvenile _triceratops_ , which Marco probably would’ve bombarded Jean with anyway, even without the emotional attachment that Jean shares with the young dinosaur. Seeing the infant out with the herd and approaching full growth does make Jean feel warm – a pleasant, uncomplicated warm – but it’s often Marco’s face, beaming proudly in the corner of the odd, atrocious selfie with his reptilian pack in the distance, that sparks the fuse for Jean. His eyes are always drawn to Marco first, always drawn past the great, blundering _rocks_ of creatures in the background, always drawn past Connie or Sasha’s fingers obscuring the corner of the lens on the inevitable occasion of them stealing Marco’s phone, and even drawn past the rare, candid snapshot of Mikasa in the lab, interacting with the hatchlings – to fall upon the dimples that crown Marco’s lips, or to count the crow’s feet that frame his eyes, making sure that he has not developed any more in the time Jean has been gone.

Photographs are like patchwork over a crevice that is far too deep and blustery for a simple Band-Aid to be able to stitch it back together – and however many Jean might be able to paste over himself is never enough. It’s not the real thing.

Jean misses a lot of things, and it’s often late at night, when he can feel every lump in his second-hand mattress and the central air whirs too loudly to ignore, that he feels the throb in the centre of his chest most painfully.

He misses his hotel room. It’s a trivial and entirely shallow thing to regret, but he misses the duck-down pillows, and the restful nights of undisturbed sleep, and the room-service pizza eaten on the floor with Mikasa as they poured over indiscernible paper work until all hours.

He misses the sterility of the lab: its white-washed floors, and glassy walls, and high-vaulted ceilings. Hanji’s laboratory sometimes feels like a dungeon, cramped into the basement of the building shared with three other science disciplines, and its work benches are wooden, ripped straight out of the seventies. Paper work and unwashed glassware litter every discernible space, and sometimes the IR spectrometer needs a good kick to get going – and the thrum that echoes through the rafters of the space isn’t the gentle reassurance of state-of-the-art equipment, but of the filtering system threatening to cut out at any moment.

He misses the freedom; the space. He misses palm trees and rainforest where there are now city skylines and stadiums. He misses the roar of the ocean being a reminder of their remoteness and their _nowhereness_ , and not a call for tourists flocking to the Miami shoreline to enjoy the trash-littered sand. He misses the quiet, the serendipity, the flow of life that came with park rangers who lived in self-built shacks and spent nights drinking beer around a campfire crackling with Creole mumblings and Costa Rican melody, and who frowned at the thought of being cooped up for hours in a room full of beeping machines.

He misses things that don’t even need reiterating, because if he were to remind himself of what he held onto for such a short time, he fears blowing all his savings on a one-way ticket to _no prospects_ and a handful of hopeful _maybes_ dispersed between freckles.

Jean has changed, but he hasn’t changed enough to run away; he still clings to the things he knows, if only for want of an anchor keeping him from doing something _really_ stupid. It’s like a limbo; a purgatory that can neither swing one way or the other. He hates it.

Jean is grounded by talk of _InGen_ – which becomes more and more of Marco’s concern as the summer months lengthen – and mentions of how they’ve started replacing park rangers with Navy men. Marco mentions a few of his friends who were laid off, and whilst Jean cannot pin many faces to names, he’s not dense enough to ignore the fact that there’s focus on firing the man and women who had worked with the _velociraptors_ , the _t.rex_ , the _carnivores_. It’s something Marco has already realised, and his worry is not unwarranted. He fears for the well-being of the dinosaurs, and so does Jean – to an extent. Living things should not be exposed to militarisation like this.

But at the same time, Jean can’t help but wonder: _what will happen when they are?_

 

* * *

 

(He doesn’t have to wait long to find out.)

 

* * *

 

It’s a Sunday night in August. Jean’s not entirely sure of the date; he hasn’t so much as glanced at a calendar in almost a week, making the most of his well-deserved vacation after the chaotic rush that was handing in his thesis proposal on time, by deciding to ignore time and space entirely, and focus solely on working his way through his Netflix recommendations.

The air conditioning has broken – it had bowed out with a feeble cough and a splutter earlier in the day, leaving Jean stranded on his couch in a vest and his underwear, legs sprawled over the armrest, and a can of Coke straight from the refrigerator pressed against his forehead – and Jean is at the mercy of the Floridian late-summer heat at last, his penchant for wearing sweaters around the apartment having died out long before the central air.

He rolls lethargically onto his stomach, his skin pasted with a sticky film of sweat that has him feeling disgustingly grimy, and reaches lazily for his laptop on the coffee table, patting at the keyboard with fumbling fingers. It’s late – probably erring on the obscene – but Jean has no reason to sleep. There’s no work to wake up for in the morning, and his freezer if fully stocked with popsicles to beat away the simmering weather, and Marco has yet to drop his customary Sunday-evening message into Jean’s inbox.

He refreshes the webpage again when his computer fizzles out of hibernation, the bright screen against the gloominess of his apartment making Jean squint and wince away – but the only new mail at the top of the pile is coupons for free pizza. (Which is definitely not a _bad_ thing, but it’s not what he was hoping for.)

He huffs loudly, puffing out his cheeks as he rolls over onto his back once more, holding his soda can against the side of his face, leeching the cool. It’s going to be a pointless exercise to stay up all night waiting for an email that might never arrive, but Jean knows he’s probably going to do it anyway, because _irresponsible adult_ seems like a good descriptor of his current, sprawled state of being.

He dozes in and out of the hazy languidity of Netflix on his television screen, soaking in the grimy glow that flickers across the surfaces of his apartment slightly grey-green; the damp on the ceiling and the disarray of discarded takeaway boxes littered around the room ooze of the Bohemian without all the glamour. ( _Squalor_ , Jean calls it. Dust bunnies aren’t exactly a fashion statement, but he hasn’t found the energy to fork out on a replacement for his busted vacuum cleaner.)

Miami is always yellow in the day times – the streets paved with an ever-present orange haze that never permeates – but blue in the night. The city lit seems to glow, and the light that dissolves through Jean’s flimsy curtains reminds him implicitly of the same colour as the water in the abyss of the _mosasaurus_ – an ethereal, illuminated blueness that melts into ripples and voids. He sighs – for the city is unable to breathe like that, its blueness too caught up in electricity and vibrancy – and remembers the peacefulness of staring into such watery depths.

He slips in and out of the memory for a while, his arm draped flaccidly from the edge of the sofa, and his bare legs prickly where they rub together chaffingly. If he sleeps, he doesn’t know it, the strange – and possibly worrying – stains on the ceiling exactly the same each time he blinks and feels like he’s misplaced five minutes somewhere between the couch and … well, _the couch_. It’s too much effort now to reach for the remote and select the next episode of whatever show he had been watching, so he lies comatosely in the cycle of the television jingle that replays over and over again.

Jean almost misses when his phone rings – so far gone into that sleazy, summer laziness that his ears might ignore things they do not want to hear, and phone ringtones might become little more than another siren to drown out the tune of the city that is a poor substitute for crickets in the undergrowth – but on the seventh ring, he is startled into sovereignty, bolting upright on the couch with what feels like a cattle prod of electricity pressed flush against his spine.

His cell phone rings brittle, vibrating whatever surface it has been abandoned on with the sound of a power drill, and Jean tumbles from the squelching masses of the couch cushions and onto the floor, hands patting around, flailing, to find his phone.

When he slams his palm down hard, he almost thinks he shatters the screen beneath the heel of his hand – but he has little time to dwell on any cracks across the LCD when he brings the blue light to his face, and reads the time (three-thirty in the morning), and the caller (Ymir).

Jean scowls at the screen. Ymir lives in the same time zone as him when she’s at college. She shouldn’t be ringing him at this time in the morning. (Heck, she shouldn’t be ringing him, _period_. Which makes Jean worry. Either something’s wrong, or she’s drunk. He’s not sure which he fears having to deal with more.)

He answers with spite already lacing his tone, pressing the phone to his ear with an audible grumble.

“What d’ya want?” he sighs exasperatedly into the receiver, immediately glad not to hear any hiccups or booming music from her side – but his tune changes as soon as he hears the franticness in her opening breath.

“’Bout fucking time you picked up!” she snaps, and something in her severity makes Jean’s skin prickle, every hair on his arms standing to attention. Usually her insults are laced with teasing; with joking; with jibing that softens the blow. Not this time. “Have you _seen_?”

Jean frowns, rolling out his words through the fatness of a yawn.

“Seen what?” he gripes, grabbing the TV remote to turn down the volume. “It’s three thirty in the damn mornin’, Ymir.”

“Turn on the damn TV. ABC, NBC, Fox, it don’t fucking matter,” Ymir says, and Jean hears her sternness wavering. Her words reverberate hollowly down the line, and whilst Jean has never known what it’s like to break down, he imagines the sound of shattering begins something like this. Ymir’s voice sounds very thin. “Put … put the damn news on.”

Jean does as he’s told, flicking off Netflix and turning onto whichever news station appears first. He is not prepared for what he sees.

Or, more implicitly: he’s not prepared for what he _recognises_. He drops the remote onto the floor with a careless clatter.

It’s the conical roof of the Hammond Creation Lab that smokes, and it’s the glass windows of the visitor’s centre in tiny, fragmented pieces across the steps that once housed holograms and dozens of milling people. It’s the umbrellas of the beer garden up-turned in the middle of the street, and it’s the street lamps that lit the way to the aquarium bent and bludgeoned out of shape by something very big, and very angry.  It’s the embers that simmer burningly across the roof of the gift shop as the camera pans over the promenade, and it’s the face of Mr. Masrani that appears on the screen – taken from some promotional image no doubt – that is capped with the subtitle: _CEO of Masrani Global killed in freak disaster at Jurassic World._

The scene on the television screen is burning, the feed of the helicopter hovering over the remains of the promenade on Isla Nublar fizzling with static and the faint murmurings of the camera crew as they survey the destruction in apprehensive dismay.

Jean stares at the screen with wide eyes and an open mouth – and it’s not horror, not instantly. His eyes cannot process it – his head cannot process what he sees quick enough to lead to things as simple as horror and shock. He remains frozen, excruciatingly aware of the feeling of every single red blood cell within his veins crystallising painfully.

A live feed scrolls across the bottom of the screen as the camera continues to sweep panningly over what was once Isla Nublar, and now: destruction. Jean reads it in bursts; in collections of words that fall hard on deaf ears: _containment breech_ , _eighty-four dead_ , _thousands injured_.

An image of a white dinosaur flashes upon the screen, and Jean does not recognise it – not even slightly. Its skin is chalky-white and its stoop like a _velociraptor_ , the claws held tight against its chest curved like the tusks of an elephant, yet sharpened into goring points. Razor-like feathers fan out along the ridge-like bones of its spine, and there’s something about the thinly-stretched skin across its muzzle, clinging to every hollow of the jaw, that reminds Jean of a skull stripped of flesh – gruesome and frightening.

The broadcaster calls it a hybrid; a genetic combination of the traits of many species that made it so difficult to catch and so easy for it to rampage across the island; a killer of many – be it tourist or park ranger who stayed behind to help, be it Simon Masrani or an innocent child who had no idea what _InGen_ were doing behind the scenes. They call it the _indominus_ , and Jean’s blood, already ice-like and crystalline, splinters with hair-like fragments. Oh God. _Oh no_.

He gasps aloud into the receiver of his cell phone, and its only then, in the hurtle back down to earth, that he hears Ymir sobbing on the other end of the line.

Krista’s name spills over her lips like spittles of drool – ugly and convoluted and barely legible – and Jean hears something about not being able to get in contact with her. She wails bitterly about fences and perimeters, and about _InGen_ and the Navy, and about Eren only caring about the dinosaurs killed in the rampage – but it all rattles hollowly and strikingly through the chasm ripped open in Jean’s mind.

He can only think of two things.

The first: _this is him_. He did this. He helped. He listened to Mikasa about how _InGen_ would be their downfall, and still he handed his research to Levi blindly, without saying a word. This is what _indominus_ was; what _indominus_ is. Partly his.

The second: _the bracelet on his wrist_. The man with dinosaur faeces smothered across his forearms, all the way up to his elbows. Marco’s name chokes upon Jean’s lips, and it silences Ymir with a loud, snivelling sniff on her end.

“There’s nothing,” she whimpers, her voice hoarse and guttural, “ _Nothing_. There’s … there’s God-damn _nothing_. I can’t get through to anyone, and nor could Eren— I can’t— what if—”

 _What if_. Jean doesn’t want to think _what if_ , not this time. He’s strung himself along on a lot of possibilities, ever the one to hold all the options in both hands and weigh up the consequences – because he’s smart, he’s sensible, he’s—

Not this time. He doesn’t want to know the consequences. Not when he can stare at the monstrous, _murderous_ creature on the TV screen, and feel like he’s suffocating on the visceral feeling of blood on his hands.

 

* * *

 

Jean doesn’t know how long he stays on the line with Ymir – her whimpers quieten and her sniffles become more nasally, until the broadcast they’re both watching switches back to shaky, amateur footage of a _pterosaur_ attack on the floods of civilians, caused by Masrani crashing his helicopter into the aviary in the chaos, and Ymir begins to wail again, her shaky sobs jack-hammering into Jean’s temple where he presses his cell phone without remorse. He fears the same thing she does: seeing Krista, seeing someone they know, seeing _Marco_ in the footage, scrambling through the manic crowds to try and find safety amidst the onslaught of projectile beaks and maelstrom wings.

He flicks through all of the major broadcasters, but the footage is all the same, with every single station fixed on what they’re dubbing a _mass accident_ – but Jean knows better than that. He knows it was inevitable. (They were playing with nature. They only cared about money. They wanted to militarise things that should have been extinct. It is no accident.)

The story unravels itself with all the stickiness of a cobweb and all the acridness of a mouthful of smoke that Jean tries to swat away from stinging his nose and mouth; he can almost taste the burning rubble and shattered windows that scour his television screen as he prays in earnest in front of it, squatted cross-legged on the floor in his underwear.

“Why didn’t they evacuate everyone the moment the _indominus_ got out?” Ymir whines into his ear, her breathing heavy and laboured. “Had to … had to fucking wait for Masrani to drive his fucking helicopter into the bird cage, and release the _pterosaurs_ upon the main street, huh? Wait for that fucking _monster_ to rampage through the fences and destroy everything? Why the fuck did they try to _fuck_ with science like that?”

Ymir repeats the same questions over and over again into Jean’s ear as they watch, glued to the screen and the roving footage of the island. The helicopter whizzes over the flickering of dying neon lights, picking up movement roaming through the carnage: the colossal, bludgeoning figure of the _t.rex_ is illuminated in shadow by the spotlights, stamping its way over parasols and gift shop memorabilia and the unmistakeable sight of bodies on the asphalt.

Jean feels sick. Ymir makes a noise that suggests she might be very close to doing the same; a fluid-filled hiccup that threatens a wretch, followed up by an audible shiver that ripples its way through Jean as well.

He picks at the _triceratops_ tooth pressed flat against his wrist, acutely aware of the way it digs into his veins and pricks his skin white and red. He knows he’s panicking, and he knows the signs of shock – but somehow it doesn’t vocalise itself. Someone he’s not crying down the phone, or breathing manically and pulling at his hair, or drowning under the throes of hysteria. He doesn’t move – and it’s because he feels the chaos brewing inside himself as disbelief, building up and brimming, pushing against his skin and his bones, and he knows – he fucking _knows_ – that if he moves, he might burst, and it will be a disgusting explosion of guts and blood and gruesome things that fling off his tongue as forked words.

He trembles with the tension of it all, his skin rippling beneath the surface as he holds it all in, and stays silent. His mouth forms a tight line, his teeth biting down sharply into his lower lip, stinging as his skin threatens to split, and he huffs in and out through his nose. He doesn’t dare to blink – he can’t afford to miss the flash of a face he might recognise across the screen as the report skims through the same, few, repetitive reels of amateur footage.

He almost doesn’t dare to breathe – but the sound of his own breath being expelled forcefully through his nose is necessary.

 _Necessary_ , because in the silence that would replace it, he’d remember too many smiles, and think too much of the number of times he had typed _indominus_ across the top of his data sheets, and taste the ferrous tang of blood upon his tongue.

Mr. Masrani’s face encompasses the screen more times than Jean can count – and if he could open his mouth without imploding, he would scream at the broadcasters for it: because they _know_ he’s dead, but there are others— there are _others_ they need to know about. That park was theirs too. Not just Simon Masrani’s. Not just _InGen_ ’s. There were others. _Are_ others.

Ymir does the screeching for him, spiteful curses pouring from her lips in loud clatterings and clashings rocking the line stretched thin between her and Jean. She roars at the television in her student apartment, some thousand miles away from Jean upon the sandy stretches of downtown Miami, spitting out the obscenities that have battered away her tears and replaced her whimpering with unbridled _anger_.

Jean winces. He’s not angry. He’s ashamed. He’s too many things to count.

 

* * *

 

The sun dawns in streaks of yellow and gold, blinding Jean as it streams irreverently through the crack in his flimsy curtains. He’s been plastered to the television screen for almost three hours now, and his eyes are stinging, his eyelids _aching_.

Ymir hangs up around six – only to ring Eren, and see if he’s managed to reach any of their friends, or Krista (whose name still wobbles fragile within her throat, the timbre like trembling glass) – and Jean steals the moment to dial Marco’s number into his cell phone, his fingers shaky and clumsy upon the keys.

There is no answer, and each shrill prattle of the ring tone clenches a little tighter around Jean’s heart as he rues Marco for not picking up, embittered curses seeping from his lips as he tries to pretend that it’s Marco’s fault for not picking up, Marco’s gift at always running late, Marco’s sensibility for helping others before caring about himself – and not the worst.

The phone skips through to voice mail, the cheery, Spanish drawl filling the silence before the beep with words Jean doesn’t understand but longs for dearly; Jean shudders with a long, slow expulsion of breath as he hangs up, and presses his phone against his mouth, pursing his lips.

He would give a lot to hear a cheerful _que m’iche_ , and would give even more for a breathy, exerted _Jean, I am alright_. He squeezes his eyes tightly shut and, whilst he’s never been a big believer in anything going on upstairs, he drops in a word, a _prayer_ , to anyone that might be listening. There’s no time for pleasantries or apologies for not believing in God before now – and he might as well _try_.

He’s never wished for something so much. He never believed wishing this strongly was something he could _do_.

Jean startles with a squawk that deafens the buzz of the television when his cell phone begins to ring in his hands – and for a moment, his heart lurches with misguided hope – but it’s only Ymir ringing back, her contact flashing across the screen with all the franticness that undoubtedly licks abrasively at her sanity.

“A-anything?” she hushes, in the moment Jean hits the green answer button. He shakes his head, but quickly realises that’s not something she can see.

“No. No, nothing,” Jean murmurs, at last hearing the tell-tale shake in his own voice as he threatens to fracture. “He … he didn’t pick up. Voice mail.”

The disappointment is evident in the way Ymir sucks in a sharp breath.

“Right,” she says curtly, “ _Right_.”

“What about Eren?” Jean asks, “Did he get through to anyone?”

There’s shuffling on Ymir’s end of the line as she switches her phone from one shoulder to the other, and the buzz of her television in the background momentarily disappears as she switches channels. 

“He tried a couple people, but nothing,” Ymir says gravely, “But he got a contact number for the … for the – said he tried a couple times, but couldn’t … couldn’t get through.”

“Contact number?”

“Y-yeah,” Ymir sniffles, “Switch onto NBC. They’ve … they’ve evacuated to Costa Rica, and there’s a number— it’s on the screen now— for people who’ve lost … who can’t get in touch with loved ones.”

Jean presses the button on his remote too firmly, and the channel flicks over to a different, if entirely indiscernible news broadcast of the same, damning footage. Someone in the studio is voicing over the familiar camera pans, already parading over _what might have gone wrong to lead to something so horrific_ and _how Masrani Global might recover from such a sinking_ – Jean tries to drown it out. He wants to go five minutes without someone smothering this in corporate veneer. Just thirty seconds without the mention of money. That’s all he asks.

“I’m gonna get my landline,” he tells Ymir tentatively, “Don’t hang up on me, yeah? I’ll try and see if I can ring through. California might just … just be busy.”

Ymir mumbles in assent and Jean abandons his cell phone on the coffee table as he switches it to speaker, scrambling to his feet to fetch his landline handset from the kitchen. He types in the numbers he reads from the TV screen with lip-bitten cautiousness, taking care not to accidentally let the pad of his finger slip and dial the wrong digits. Ymir panders loudly, but as the landline begins to ring, he urges her to hush.

There are five rings that Jean counts with baited breath, and then the phone clicks. A different dialling tone plays in his ear as he’s connected to a speaker board, and then someone picks up.

“H-hello?” Jean gushes without pausing for breath, heart beat in his ears. “Hello— hi?”

There’s an electronic whir, and then a tinny, automated voice fills the silence.

“You have reached the Department of Public Safety for Costa Rica. For identifying missing persons from the incident on Isla Nublar, please stay on hold. The line is currently busy. Your call will be patched through when an operator becomes available—”

Jean pulls the handset away from his ear and hits the end-call button forcibly, dropping the telephone onto the coffee table, which alerts Ymir.

“Jean?”

He grits his teeth, grinding the enamel until his jaw hurts.

“On hold,” he snaps gruffly, “The line’s busy. ‘Course it’s _fucking_ busy, I—”

“I’ll try,” Ymir interjects, “I’ll try. Someone has to fucking try— _I have to find her_ , Jean.”

 _I know_ , Jean wants to spit out, something circling predatorily in his gut. _I know. Don’t you think that I don’t fucking know. I want to find him too. I’m panicking too._  

Ymir hangs up, and the silence is quickly deafening upon Jean’s ears, the lingering beep of her dead line like a shrill screech echoing in Jean’s head. He resorts to the floor once more, folding himself up into the small gap between the couch and the coffee table, drawing his bare legs against his chest. He rests his ear upon the table, hair falling across his forehead, and is unable to close his eyes, fixated on the sight of both his phones lying quiet upon the wood.

He’s not sure how long he lies there staring – or if somehow he falls asleep without actually closing his eyes – but when his cell phone begins to ring, vibrating the table and his temple like a power drill in concrete, he feels the sickest he’s felt in a long time. (No amount of staring down a _t.rex_ , or rocketing through the air at twenty-thousand feet in a tin can, can compare to the sickening nausea rummaging through his gut in the name of fear.)

He presses the phone to his ear in a daze, polluted only further by Ymir’s sobbing over not even getting through to the operating board, the automated message telling her in robotic tones to try again later.

Jean presses a palm to his forehead, raking his fingers through his hair, unruly with the sweat it has collected, and stares down at the grain of his table-top as he listens to Ymir grow hysterical again.

“What if she’s hurt, Jean? What if she’s out there in some hanger somewhere with her leg done up, or half an arm missing, or— or— what if her family doesn’t know? Fucking _Christ_ , I don’t even know how to get in contact with her family; I don’t even know their names, and— what if she hasn’t even been evacuated yet, Jean? Jean? Are they still evacuating? Is everyone off the island? Jean? What if— what if—”

“What if I fly out there?”

Ymir’s tirade comes hurtling to a halt.

“ _What_?”

Jean repeats himself more resolutely, scooting his open laptop across the table and typing in the website for Miami International with one hand.

“What if I fly out there?” he says simply, reassuring himself, “There’s gotta be flights, right? They’ll be putting on flights.”

“I— you— you can’t just—” Ymir splutters, “You can’t just fucking—”

Jean thinks about the pay check sitting in his bank account: the tidy sum of money that was going to be a cushion for the rest of his summer holidays, spent on his Netflix subscription and numerous takeaways.

A headline scrolls across the web page for Miami International Airport, informing him that extra flights to San José are being laid on by US Airways. Jean clicks on it in earnest.

“I could help,” he says. “I could go help.”

 _Go find them. Krista. Mikasa. Marco._ It sounds desperate, but not so dumb. Jean doubts if anything would sound dumb at this moment in time.

“Go help?” Ymir growls – and Jean knows that her anger is directed at her frustration, and not him; yet still it makes him shiver. “Help what? You’re a … you’re a _biology_ student, Jean – not a doctor, not a paramedic, not a solider, not a— you’re scared of everything, you— you piece of _shit_. You won’t even leave your lab, you won’t even—”

Jean hangs up. He drops his phone on the table, and doesn’t blame Ymir. He can’t. He clicks on the drop down menu of flight times on the website for Miami International, eyes glazing over whatever price he’s being charged to find the people he calls his few friends in the world.

Jean’s sick of waiting. He’s done it all his life after all. Sometimes being sensible is overrated.

 

* * *

 

It’s midday over the Caribbean Sea – not that Jean would be able to tell this vast stretch of blue ocean and bank of fluffy, white clouds apart from the last time he was in a plane jetting towards the tropics. The sun is bright, careless and carefree, and it streams through the cabin window that Jean tries diligently not to stare out of; there’s something sterile and insufferable about the blinding light, lauding its contentment over the fact that the woman to Jean’s right hasn’t stopped praying since they took off, and the family two rows back is weeping tearfully to the stewardess, who has tried to console them more than once.

There’s also something torturous about it: the sun, the blue sky devoid of winds and storm, the blanket of the sea that seems calms and frothless from thirty-thousand feet – like a teasing moniker that seems to boast the fact that the world goes on, unspoiled, when something horrific has happened.

Jean grips the armrest of his seat; he does not want to look at the sea, but the longer he stares at the hard plastic of the chair in front, the more aware he becomes of the gentle sobbing and lurid whimpering all around him, of families and friends scared for their loved ones. They’ve been in the air for two hours already – and before that, some three hours in a frantic line at Miami International, each trying to nudge to the front to get on the next flight to Costa Rica – and the tearfulness hasn’t stopped.  

The panic prowls around Jean like a vagrant cat; he knows it’s unwelcome and unnerving, and he feels unable to tear his eyes away from watching the way it stalks about his person, taking care to press down on each strand of his ever-fraying nerves. And yet – much like watching something so skittish and flighty – it does not act upon that edginess that has him on a knife point, instead dragging the heavy tow of fear into something slow and hauling.

Jean almost wishes for the hysteria, but instead he’s left to locked limbs and his fingers digging into the seat rest and his teeth gnawing into his lower lip with the passing of time like the dripping of a leaky sink or the acute ticking of a clock that won’t move fast enough – he’s left with far too much time to think.

His phone is off, tucked into the pocket of his slacks, and it feels intrinsically wrong to have it on silent when people could be ringing him with information – it’s not like they could afford to lay on emergency flights in the aircraft with those fancy Wi-Fi hotspots – but as Jean looks around, he seems people with their hands cupped over their cell phones, bowed over the screens as they try to conceal the glow of frantic text messages and emails that won’t refresh at this altitude.

Jean sinks in his seat, his back squeaking as he slides down the cheap leatherette. His chin meets his chest and he tries to close his eyes, focussing on the rumble of the airplane through the balls of his feet. He’s glad that he cannot feel the way the wind outside buffets the wings, or whips at the aluminium body – if he had to do this flight in anything more rickety, he knows he would be one of those standing in the aisles panicking, threatening to rip open the emergency door and throw himself into the sea.

He reminds himself to breathe. He counts to three and exhales, and then to three again, before inhaling. He repeats the mantra for some time, locking himself inside a box of silence within which the walls are too thick to reverberate when someone knocks upon them.

He tries to remember what the main street on Isla Nublar looked like before the chaos.  Tries to remember how the walls of the laboratory shone in the artificial light before they were smashed to smithereens. Tries to remember what the pictures on his television screen ruined for him.

He pulls Eren’s blundering enthusiasm inside the box; Ymir’s brackish, teasing laughter; Mikasa’s subtle smile that she too often hid around the other people in their laboratory.

Marco’s freckles. Jean wishes he had tried counting them when he had the chance. (There was never any chance, of course. He was always too shy to look at him for long enough to be able to map them. It was always like peeking at the sun from the corner of his eye, as if too afraid to gaze at it straight on. Jean resents being _too afraid_.)

There’s little Jean can do, so he implores that Ymir has had more luck getting through to the people crowded in an aircraft hangar somewhere on the runway of San José, and he hopes that Eren has had enough patience to stay on the emergency phone line to reach an operator, and he prays that the last time he saw Marco Bodt was not beneath the wings of a propeller-led airplane.

 

* * *

 

The chaos is so much worse when they land; the panic had been cooped up within the cabin of the airplane when in the air, but on the ground it is rampant. The moment Jean’s feet meet tarmac, he feels his blood pressure spike, and he clutches his satchel against his chest like a life belt as he’s tumbled through the crowds of swarming people. He’s funnelled down a strip of the runway by a line of orange-vests, blowing whistles and waving their hands, and almost loses his feet beneath himself a couple of times as the people behind him push and prod and urge him aggressively to move faster, as he’s too caught up in wide-eyes stares at the jumbo jets taking off mere metres away from them, drowning out rational thought with the thunderous roar of turbine engines.

The runway swarms with buses, crammed with people pressed against the windows, and the disorder brews bitingly; Jean is lead towards an aircraft hangar, all corrugated iron and steel, rusted by storms that have passed, and overflowing with people from the roll-down doors.

He has seen things like this on the television: he remembers the wall-to-wall coverage of hurricane Katrina, and the blanket footage of muddy tidal waves following the boxing-day tsunami that flattened so much of south-east Asia that one year. It makes it all the less tangible for him as he’s buffeted forward: he stares mutely at the people lent against the walls of the hangar with blood caked along their hairlines and tears in their eyes as they hold one another, and his eyes linger desperately on the mills of men and woman huddled around paper lists tacked to signposts and billboards, relentlessly pouring over names, looking for just the one they want to find.

The stream of people that Jean is caught up in begins to thin, and then disperse; the woman whom he had sat next to on the plane rushes straight for the boards full of missing people, a shred of her own paper clutched in her hand; and a family Jean recognises from the airport rushes boldly into the arms of a man who has emerged from the hangar, waving desperately.

Jean finds himself grinding to a halt, his feet sticking to the tarmac, the friction on the soles of his shoes too much to let him continue to roll forward in a silent stupor. Mothers and fathers rush past him, children are bundled into the arms of parents, an older woman is helped to limp towards the hangar from one of the buses that has just unloaded, her arms around two Costa Rican men in fluorescent orange, and blood smeared down her bare leg. Jean’s hackles twitch with the red flashes of reporting cameras, and the five-minute-famous push their way in front of broadcasters to recite the stories of how neighbours were plucked from the street by _pterosaurs_ and swept away into the sky, and how it was all a sign from God that man should not interfere with the grand plan of creation.

Jean winces. It both irks him to hear it, and stings him to know that something as straightforward as the wroth of God would repeal him from the shame of knowing the truth. There’s no God here; only corporate greed and a fantastic, posing _nightmare_ of a situation that had started with John Hammond’s vision, and ended up in a lab fuelled by dangerous insatiability.

No-one tries to talk to Jean. He catches the eye of the few people he dares meet face to face, but even the men in orange jackets give him one glance, and see him neither bloody nor crying, and leave him be, scurrying away to other things probably more important.

Jean stands alone for some time, turning in a very slow circle as he watches buses of people arrive from elsewhere on the airfield, and other planes come into land and immediately disembark, and people finding loved ones, and people finding no loved ones, staggering from the hangar with bereavement grabbing their shoulders and weighing them down. It’s bewildering. Jean’s head spins. Some part of him decides to go inside.

The air is hot and humid – the Costa Rican summer unforgiving at best and smothering at worst – and it’s only made all the more suffocating by the collective breaths of hundreds of people beneath the roof of the hangar. Fold-out camp beds are militarised in regimented lines; plastic garden chairs, picnic blankets, inflatable air mattresses too, are spread out across the floor, littered with people sleeping, people wincing, people sitting with their heads bowed in a stony silence as they wait for who knows what.

Jean tries not to look at the IV drips tapped up to those sprawled out on the fold-away beds, incoherent murmurs dying on their lips as babble as they shake their heads and makeshift nurses try to shush them. He _can’t_ look. He can’t spare the chance that he’ll recognise someone on one of those beds.

(He tries hard not to imagine how Marco’s feet would hang over the edge of the thin and flimsy mattress should he be laid up upon one.)

(He tries hard not to imagine the sterility of white bandages against the tan of Marco’s skin; against the darker pinpricks of freckles; against the khaki starchiness of his uniform.)

(He tries hard not to imagine how a pained groan would grumble from deep within Marco’s throat, the sound guttural and chesty, and rasping in a way different to the husk that enveloped every word ever spoken in Jean’s direction.)

Someone taps him on the shoulder, and Jean _leaps_ to attention, spinning on his heals with the dying expectation of being greeted by a name badge he knows or a face he recognises.

It’s neither: just a faceless man in a routine orange vest. Jean notices little about him save for the clipboard in his hand and the sympathy stretched across his jilted English.

“Are you looking for somebody? You need help?”

Jean runs a hand through his hair, but his fingers are sweaty and tangle awkwardly and painfully in his roots. He huffs loudly, resenting the way his entire arm seems to tremble.

“I’m, uh—” he starts, his voice croaky from misuse and other things. His words are shaky, clinging onto the walls of his throat frantically, if only to stretch just a little further away from the flightfulness in his chest that threatens to make him want to scatter. “I’m looking for— for some of the staff? From— from the park. Have any of them— any of them been evacuated?”

The man frowns – Jean thinks – as if not understanding Jean’s fragmented blather, but then runs a finger down his clipboard. He purses his lips into a tight line.

“No staff. Only civilian names so far,” he says sternly, “But maybe some uniforms on the plane that— uh— just landed.”

The radio in the man’s pocket buzzes and someone spouts spit-fire Spanish on the other end; the man scowls, and gives Jean a nod and a pat on the shoulder, before disappearing back the way he came, the radio pressed to his lips and his clipboard beneath his arm. Jean watches him go, following the bright orange of his jacket disappear into the more muted colours of civilians covered in debris and dust, and then he is alone again.

Jean walks for a while – it’s better than standing still and dumbly staring at the ceiling, with everything blank behind the eyes – and he begins methodically traipsing the rows of evacuees, walking the length of each aisle in turn, scouring the people squatted on the floor, some staring up at him with wide, wild eyes, and some with eyes screwed tightly shut in the arms of friends and family.

He’s asked more than once if he’s a paramedic – and he wonders what about his thrown-together wardrobe gives that idea – but it hurts to have to say _no_ , and watch faces fall and hands tighten around the fingers of a friend clearly biting their lip in pain. He passes more people trying to speak to him in Spanish, and maybe one or two in French, possibly a German – he doesn’t quite know – and it’s awkward to have to shake his head and hold up his hands in defence of not understanding.

He should be _helping_. That’s what he tells himself every time he skitters past someone who needs a washcloth dabbed against the blood on their forehead, or with each desperate parent or aunt or uncle he passes in the other direction clearly looking for someone themselves. He should stop and help: because that’s what Mikasa would do, or what Marco would do, or what he told Ymir he would do, and it sure does niggle at the back of his mind for each step he takes out of the way of someone stretched across the aisle, or for each stare he purposely avoids.

But at the same time, he hears Ymir’s snotty crying down the phone line, and the more selfish part of himself – the part of himself more prone to things like fear and panic and all things normal in a situation like this – instructs him firmly that he has to find Krista, _for_ Ymir. (Has to find Marco, _for_ himself.)

They have to be _somewhere_.

 

* * *

 

Jean is not sure how many aisles of people he walks – he loses count – but the ambiguous intensity of looking so many in the eye and feeling both invasive and vulnerable is enough to solder him for what he knows will be a long time yet. (There’s nothing here that will make for suitcases full of memories. There’s no luggage allowance limiting how much of this he will remember. It is going to be a lot.)

In every sniffling child, and in every man gritting his teeth as someone patches up a gash in his arm or leg, Jean sees the screen of his laboratory computer, and all the times he entered in numbers to his spreadsheets, and assigned chemical peaks on his spectra, and handed Levi a document under the guise of _indominus_. Jean thinks about the white, translucent-skinned _monster_ that he had seen flashed across his screen at God-forsaken in the morning – that thing was no dinosaur, because Marco loves dinosaurs, and Marco could not have loved that – and even if it’s the scars of a _pterosaur_ that litter the skin in bruises and blood of the people Jean passes, it’s the _indominus_ that he sees in their eyes, teeth bared and roar vicious.

Jean rues the day that email from _InGen_ arrived in his inbox, but not as much as he rues the day he accepted their offer.

It was destined for this from the beginning. God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Dinosaurs _eat_ man.

That sounds like something Eren – or someone – has said before, but boy, it rings true now— _wait_.

 _Is that_ —?

Jean shouldn’t be able to distinguish a certain shade of khaki through a crowd like this, but he does— his eyes are drawn to that muted shade of brown-green, designed to blend into the park surroundings, like a hound to blood.

He almost trips over an outstretched leg, or maybe it’s a bag or a coat, in his haste to dart through the maze of camp-beds towards where he sees the familiar enough uniform of a park ranger. It’s not Marco – he can see that, and there’s no time to let his heart rise and fall again, because whoever it is has long, brown hair scraped up into a ponytail – but they might know where Marco is—

“Holy _cow_ , Sasha! It’s tender!”

Jean stops at the foot of the camp-bed where Sasha – it’s obviously Sasha with her back to him – is bowed over a bruised and battered looking Connie, a roll of gauze bandaging clamped between her teeth as she tries to rip away a long length of it. Connie has his shirt rolled up, and across his side is a shallow, but angry-looking gash – the product of a razor-sharp _pterodactyl_ beak, or a shard of glass broken in the chaos. It hasn’t bled much, but the skin around the wound is purpling with the blossoming of poppy bruises, and his uniform appears tattered. His usually cheerful expression is contorted into something wheezing and complaining, but he doesn’t look to be suffering under something serious. Jean is relieved.

“ _Mmph_ — hold still you big baby!” Sasha garbles over her mouthful of bandages, trying diligently to lay a strip of the gauze over Connie’s cut, and then tape it down with one hand. “Do you want to bleed out and _die_? ‘Cus I can still make that happen.”

Sasha prods his side mercilessly and Connie wails theatrically, moving to shield his eyes with his hands – until he notices Jean at his feet, staring at him in gawkish silence.

“Jean!” he exclaims, yelping a little as Sasha slaps the medical tape onto his side with a good-natured smack of her fingers. “What the— the hell are you doing here, dude?!”

Jean opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out, save maybe a deflating whistle of air. Sasha has also turned to stare at him, but when Connie tries to sit up, she immediately resorts to shoving him back down onto the fold-out.

“Stay _down_ ,” she commands, “You’re of no use to anyone limping around leaving a trail of blood behind you.”

“Is it— is it bad?” Jean asks tentatively, although he feels Connie’s injuries aren’t as serious as Sasha’s need to keep him strapped to the bed. “What happened?”

“ _Pterodactyl_ outta nowhere, that’s what!” Connie chirps, “Like a fucking ninja, I tell ya’. I always said to Bert those things were out for blood. Way too clever for their own good, but— _ow_!”

Connie grimaces as Sasha pokes him hard in the ribs, her fierce scowl telling him that he’s being way too animated for her liking.

“He’s gonna be _fine_ ,” she stresses, looking up at Jean with a deadpan stare that is uncharacteristic on her usually-jovial face. “It’s not a deep cut. We were pretty lucky.” She pushes herself to her feet them, dusting the shirt of her uniform for a blackened dirt that is not the sort Jean is used to seeing caked across the khaki fabric. It looks like motor oil, or maybe crusted blood. He would rather not know which.

“What are you doing here, Jean?” she says, resting her hands on her hips in a fashion surprisingly matronly. The severity in her tone is more than slightly alarming; Jean is unused to it. “Marco said you live in Florida right now.”

“I came to— to help,” Jean says, his voice squeakier than he would like as he remembers Ymir’s scolding words about how valuable his _help_ could be. He changes his tone when Sasha’s expression doesn’t change, and he fears she is judging his pointless recklessness; his words tumble over his lips too fast. “Look— Ymir couldn’t get in contact with Krista, and she couldn’t afford to get out here, so I— and Eren couldn’t get through to you guys, and I couldn’t—”

It’s not a sentence he quite manages to finish, but Sasha interjects in time to save him the pang of unspoken but resident fear that bangs like a gong – unignorable – in his stomach.

“Krista?” she says, “We were on the same boat out.” She nods over Jean’s shoulder with a pointed look, and Jean’s eyes follow: he recognises the blonde bob of hair, even if it is more than a little dishevelled. Krista’s white shirt and lilac-coloured shirt are muddied, filthy with dirty handprints and finger marks, and Jean watches as she unties her suit jacket from around her waist and offers it as a pillow to the elderly lady she’s speaking to.

“She said she had some first aid training or something,” Sasha continues, “I think she’s okay though. I think the people in park management were the first to be evacuated.”

“Ymir wants to know that she’s safe,” Jean remarks quietly, biting his tongue over the questions he really wants to ask. “Can you tell her that?”

Sasha nods resolutely, before a moment of awkward, saturated silence beats between them. Jean bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, scraping his shoe across the floor. Sasha is astute enough to understand his body language without need for dictionarial questions.

“Marco wasn’t on the same boat as us,” she says softly, taking care to angle herself away from Connie as she speaks, “We were with him for a bit, but— but when they called for the last civilian boat, he said he wanted to check on the _triceratops_ , and— he said he would catch up, after making sure they were okay. They had helicopters there. I’m sure he got on one of them.”

Jean grits his teeth, knowing that he cannot hide the way his face screws up, much in the same way someone’s jaw trembles when they’re trying to hold-back tears. (Jean’s eyes might be dry, but his throat still seizes up, his chest still vice-like against his lungs.)

“Idiot,” he growls, but there’s no aggression in how pathetic he sounds. His eyebrows knit together, and for a moment he allows himself to squeeze his eyes shut. Sasha doesn’t say a word. “Fucking _idiot_. ‘Course he went back for them.”

_Of course he would want to run back into the fray to protect a herd of one-tonne dinosaurs. Not like they couldn’t defend themselves with their God-damn horns, or a stampede of feet, or—_

Jean cannot find any spark to ignite the fuse of his anger. It extinguishes itself before it even begins, because he knows full-well that he isn’t mad. Not one of his nerves flares that sort of red. Not one bit.

He’s not surprised. It’s just the sort of thing Marco _would_ do.

“Do you want to stay with us for a bit?” Sasha says, concern furrowing her thin eyebrows. She tries to push for a smile, but it tries too hard to be both sympathetic and light-hearted, and ends up being a poor shadow of both. “I could use some help keeping Connie sedated. He keeps trying to get up and run around, as if he hasn’t just been gorged by a flying spear with legs.”

Jean’s own smile is faint and inconsequential, but he nods.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I— I should check in with Ymir. And Eren. Let them know what’s going on.”

 

* * *

 

Connie has more than one rendition of his dramatic tale to bombard Jean with, flailing wildly with his hands as he mimics the attack of the _pterodactyl_ that fought him, and attracting the glares of surrounding families that are offended by both his cheeriness and his _loudness_.

Jean and Sasha sit either side of Connie’s head, Jean nodding whenever Connie expects him to be impressed, and Sasha peeling away Connie’s uniform every five minutes to check that he hasn’t bled out all over his bandages.

It feels like a conversation where everyone’s talking, but nobody is listening; Jean feels the forlorn, almost _eerie_ atmosphere as a prickle dancing up and down his spine, and is acutely aware of the bustle around them drowning out against the vast, dome-like ceiling of the hangar, and the morbid quiet of the bubble they seem to be enclosed within.

Krista spots him after a while – and Jean is momentarily reposed by the flash of something _real_ and _genuine_ in her smile, a far cry from the Hollywood white-wash that she had once greeted him with months ago. She joins him at Connie’s side, and Jean explains hurriedly the reason he is here as he hands his cell phone over to Krista’s tentative hands. He watches in earnest as she dials Ymir’s number and presses the handset to her ear, chewing on the broken nail of her index finger as the rings drawl on, until her call in answered.

Something melts from Krista’s face that Jean cannot place – maybe it’s the remainder of her waxen mask plastered on for the Park, maybe it’s the composure put together for helping those around her, or maybe it’s the façade of holding herself together in the face of all of this – when Ymir answers the phone with a bark of concern that Jean can hear without her even being on speakerphone.

Krista clamps a hand across her lips and tears escape her eyes, forgoing her already-smudged mascara to roll freely down her cheeks as she cries. Jean and Sasha both look away, staring adamantly as the floor as Krista trembles over happy whimpers in response to things Ymir is clearly crying – _or swearing_ – down the phone, the noises she makes little more than mumbled _yes_ ’s and _I’m okay_ ’s.

Jean feels a myriad of things as Krista encourages Ymir that she has to give the phone back – that there are others someone might need to call, and they should conserve the battery – and they’re all exhausting to think about. He’s not the one who’s been battered and bruised and thrown about, but he aches like he has been – even if that’s a terrible thing to compare himself to, and he knows it.

Krista offers him his phone back when she’s done, carefully and gracefully wiping the tears away from her cheeks, and thanks him graciously, taking his hands in her small palms and clutching them tight. Jean feels awkward: a little shy and embarrassed, and has to drop her gaze as he tells her that it’s not a problem.

“I’m going to see what else I can do,” she says gently, her blue eyes bright, “Keep watching the door, Jean. There’s a good view from here. I’m sure he’ll be through soon, and he’ll be more than glad to see you waiting for him.”

 

* * *

 

The battery on Jean’s phone dies an anticlimactic death despite Krista’s urgency to conserve the power. (It’s no surprise considering how long Jean had been on call with Ymir the night before – and Jean’s eyelids are certainly living to tell _that_ tale, feeling like concrete blocks just begging for forty winks worth of kip – but it leaves him feeling distinctly more alone that before, despite the relief of not having Ymir attempt to check-in every half an hour, and with Connie’s endless prattle that is way too energetic for a wounded man.)

Jean is not sure how long he sits at Connie’s beside. It’s difficult to tell how many hours pass him by when little changes, save for his ass getting more and more _numb_ the longer he remains cross-legged on the floor. When the jittering of his own knees gets too much for him, and his neck can’t take the constant whip-snap glances thrown towards the hangar door every time he thinks he recognises a voice, he persuades Sasha to let him help her clean up her own cuts and bruises, and then busies himself refilling Connie’s water bottle, ignoring the insistence from Connie that he’s not incapable of walking to the water fountain himself.

The line is long for water; too many old ladies struggling with the tap, and young kids sent by their parents to fill up a pair of two-litre bottles at a time. Jean waits with his head in the clouds – or in the steel beams of the hangar roof, as it is – and his fingers flexing around the crunchy plastic of Connie’s bottle.

He deliberates over why he’s here. _Really here_ , of course.

Not because he wants to help; not because he wants to fool himself into thinking his help could be fruitful.

Not because he wanted to find Krista for Ymir (because whilst he knows it was a good thing to do, there are no binding ties between him and Ymir that could ever have really be construed to match a favour so large).

Not even because of the guilt – because Jean knows he had a hand in this, uncontrollable or not – and he’s not here to make amends for the buttons he pressed and the things he blistered in the name of science.

Not because he’s caught up on a man he knew only two months, who loved dinosaurs probably more than he loved himself, and who laughed so freely and touched Jean so gently, no matter how soaked to the bone by rain and thunderstorms he was.

Not because thoughts of Marco left alone on that island make Jean _hurt_ like he doesn’t think he’s hurt in a long, long time.

How did a summer romance – that never even became a romance – come to this? This is not Jean: he’s smart, he’s sensible, he’s not the one to put the leading foot forward, and he’s no saviour sort. He’s not brave. He doesn’t make friends because he’s afraid of people judging him for the brashness of his words and the spite that sometimes he can’t control. He stayed in grad school because he was too scared of the thought of tumbling out into the real world and finding a real job after his first degree. He clings to his seat on airplane journeys, no matter how many times he’s flown before.

It’s out of character for him to do something so spontaneous and uncalculated and to _be here_. Hell, it’s not even out of character: it’s a _different_ character. The boy who grew up in a small, back-woods town, coddled by his mother, and left lonely by the siblings that never came and the friends that were really never made to last, was different. The teenager who chose to move all the way to the sunny sandbanks of Florida was different, and the man who rocked back and forth, lazily, on a plastic stool as he waited for Professor Hanji to come bustling in with a hundred sheets of paper in their arms, was different.

None of those people would’ve flown one-thousand miles to chase after something that was hardly even a _what if_. To protect something that was merely an _it was_ , and should have been left to decay and erode with time in the white sands of an island amidst the lapping waves of the Pacific Ocean.

 _God_. Jean crumples the water bottle tighter in his grip, taking an automated step forwards towards the water dispenser as the line creeps forward.

Maybe it was Marco who changed him. Maybe it was hands skirting over knuckles, and lopsided smiles when other people laughed, and the zeal that made Jean see beautiful things where once he had decided he didn’t have _time_ for things that were beautiful, nor the appeal to attract people who were beautiful. Maybe it was: _are you nervous?_ Maybe it was: _just try._

And maybe it wasn’t Marco at all. Maybe it was a gut instinct that Jean never realised he had. A gut instinct to be reckless and to be rash in things other than the words he lets drip out over his tongue, and stew bitterly inside his head. A gut instinct to shoot out into the dark, hopeful and unsuspecting, but above all: _willing_.

Jean thinks about the _mosasaurus_ in the tank. It doesn’t think about eating; _it just eats_. It doesn’t matter if it’s fish, or shark, or prehistoric whatever-you-want. It doesn’t matter if it’s a _pterosaur_ flying low over the waves, or if it’s the chaos of people being thrown like limp sardines into the water in the wake of the hybrid that never should’ve been. (Jean saw the news reports. Jean saw the amateur footage. He shudders.) The _mosasaurus_ doesn’t think. It just does.

Maybe Jean is the same. Maybe it doesn’t have to be about complicated things like friendship, and romance, and _love_ – things that boggle with his mind and trip him over and freak him out because he has so little experience in dealing with them.

Maybe he’s here because he _just is_. It could be that simple.

Jean is two people away from the water dispenser when he hears a shout.

“¡Soque! ¡Soque! Necesito un paramédico aquí, ¡por favour!”

It strikes Jean like a thunderclap, but stills him like no storm could ever. He turns towards the voice – and the woman behind him in the queue tuts at him disapprovingly as the line ahead of them moves forward one step more and Jean doesn’t budge – and his breaths are baited. His eyes skate over the crowd like a man slipping on ice: each way and every way, raking over children and fathers in casts and paramedics in fluorescent jackets, in a clumsy, manic fervour, but he _sees_ Marco first. Truly _sees_ him.

Jean crumples Connie’s water bottle within his fist, and the brittle plastic splits in hairline cracks beneath Jean’s vicing fingers. His nostrils flare. He feels like he’s going to be sick.

Marco is limping through the door of the hangar, silhouetted darkly against the portal-glare of Costa Rican sun – but it’s unmistakeably him. His arm is slung around the shoulders of someone smaller, more fragile, who leans dependently into his weight, and Jean recognises her too. _Mikasa_. Her jeans are ripped across the thigh of her left leg, and the denim is stained dark and gruesome with wet, sticky blood. Marco hoists her a little higher from the ground, pulling her hand down over his shoulders, and adjusting his arm to catch her more securely around the waist. Jean sees that she cannot put her weight on her left foot.

“Paramedic!” Marco calls again, his voice hoarse and harsh and authoritative like Jean has never heard before. “Please, we need a paramedic!”

They are descended on by five fluorescent jackets at once, and for a moment that makes Jean’s heart lurch and his neck crane, he loses sight of Marco in the flurry.

But then he finds him again – finds the slope of his shoulders beneath his uniform, dirty and tattered; finds the sound of his voice, somehow, through the clatter and chaos – as Marco helps one of the emergency doctors lift Mikasa onto a camp-bed.

There’s blood on his hands – Jean can see that much even at a distance – and as Mikasa groans, letting her head flump back against the canvas, and the paramedics immediately elevate her leg to stem the flow of weeping blood, Marco laces his fingers behind his head as he steps back and _breathes_ , his shoulders heaving, and—

And—

And Jean _scrambles_.

He breaks into a run – if a run can be called tripping over coats and bags and people, and stumbling through the maze of camp-beds and setting limbs and blurry faces – and his chest lurches.

There doesn’t need to be a reason. It just does. _It just does_.

Jean runs, and Marco doesn’t notice – his hands clamped over his head and his eyes turned to the metal sky and nothing in his eyes – doesn’t notice until there are rapid-fire feet and there are arms flying around his shoulders and he stumbles backwards with a _welp_ , and then there’s a smack of lips against his own that is nowhere _near_ a kiss, and far more like a bullet.

Marco reacts as if he’s been shot too. He staggers backwards and grasps for the bullet-wound (his mouth), only for his hands to mash into Jean’s arms and grip him tightly as he rips Jean away from him. Panic and alarm lightnings across his eyes, pupils black and blown and already on edge from everything – _and then he realises_.

“J-Jean?!”

Jean fists his fingers iron-like in the shoulders of Marco’s work uniform – barely recognisable with how caked in mud and soot and blood it is – and hisses like he’s the one who’s just been struck. He holds fast to Marco’s clothes; doesn’t meet his eyes. Can’t. There’s only one thing he wants to say.

“You stayed behind to look after your God-damn _dinosaurs_?!” he yells into Marco’s chest, squeezing mercilessly at Marco’s shoulders. Marco stammers in notes and noises that lead to nothing articulate. “Are you for real?!”

Jean looks up, his gold glare fierce and unforgiving and diamond-sharp. Marco gawps. Everyone around them is staring. Mikasa, pale skin and clammy forehead and grimacing in pain as the paramedics around her cut away her saturated jeans, _laughs_.

Marco’s face is battered in more ways than one – but beneath the illiterate _shock_ that leaves him wide eyed and wordless, his jaw is covered in dark and patchy stubble, sticky with blood, and his hairline is lacerated with shrapnel cuts that have congealed black and viscous within the roots of his hair. His skin is grimy with smoke-dirt and gritty smears, and there’s a red welt blooming upon his cheek.

He repeats Jean’s name in disbelief. He doesn’t know how to say anything else.

“ _J-Jean_.”

Jean shakes his head vigilantly, and roughly presses both his palms to the sides of Marco’s face, turning his head to inspect the damage. There’s a thin line of blood trickling from Marco’s right ear, scoring a line down his neck and beneath the collar of his shirt. Jean growls angrily. Marco tries his name again, rattled.

“ _Jean._ ”

“You’re a fucking _idiot_ , you know that?” Jean snaps, “What sort of person turns _away_ from the rescue boat to go back and look after dinosaurs, huh? _Huh_?”

“ _Jean._ ”

“Have you seen yourself? Do you know what you fucking look like?”

“ _Jean._ ”

“There’s blood everywhere, Marco. Is it even your blood? I can’t even tell! Do you actively _try_ to get hurt?!”

“ _Jean._ ”

Marco’s hands are on Jean’s shoulders, his fingers staining Jean’s t-shirt with the muddy-brown smears of the blood that has caked his palms like poster paint. He is trembling; it makes Jean begin to tremble too – tremble like a fuse; like a rumble of thunder; like dynamite bent for ignition.

(But really, Jean doesn’t need to wait for implosion. He’s been following that inevitable track for a while now.)

He grits his teeth and presses his palms firmer against the square edge of Marco’s prickly jaw and feels Marco’s fingers dig _desperately_ into his own flesh. Marco’s eyes are eclipses now; his pupils lunar and jealous of the colour of his irises. 

“Stop. Saying. My. Name,” Jean growls, baiting the intensity that he glares up into. He knows it will melt him. “You’re an idiot. An _idiot_.”

He relinquishes himself to grazing his thumb across the angry cut over Marco’s eyebrow. Marco tries to kind his voice one, last, fruitless time.

“ _Jean—_ ”

Jean kisses him firmly to shut him up. It doesn’t taste like dirt – or at least not in the way Jean had envisioned, because Marco’s lips sure as hell _do_ taste like blood and dirt at this moment – but instead he tastes like a gasp, like bitterness, like lightning, Jean supposes. It’s not sweet; not saccharine; and Jean does not have the words to pins a flavour to a kiss, only knowing that it’s addictive, and he wants more.

Marco’s mouth is humid and fever-like, and when Jean’s fingers either side of Marco’s face change from fists to desperate clinging, Marco grabs for him to steady him as he sways on his feet. Marco’s hands are on Jean’s back, tugging at his shirt; and then they’re in Jean’s hair, fisted in his roots. The gentle tug stings, but Jean would trade nothing for the feel of blunt nails against his scalp. Marco presses into him, and Jean feels warmth _radiating_ from every touch, and wonders if he will come up in blisters from the furnace that alights where Marco’s bare skin meets Jean’s own.

Jean kisses hungrily; maybe first kisses are meant to be more delicate than this, but what does he know? He doubts if he would even be able to tell if the world was still spinning.

Marco pulls away with a wheeze, pressing his nose into Jean’s cheek with a wavering pant of breath that he tries to control weakly. Jean holds him tight, scrabbling fingers scouring the sweat-damp hairs on the back of Marco’s neck, and then digging deep into the solid mass of his shoulder blades. Marco presses his mouth hotly – and relievedly – to the sharp line of Jean’s unshaven jaw. Jean wants to be closer. How can he be closer?

But Jean tries, burying his nose in the crook of Marco’s neck, muffling his own voice. He smells like smoke.

“Idiot,” Jean murmurs.

“You didn’t need to wait to do that,” Marco replies.

“ _Finally_ ,” Mikasa croaks.         

                                         

* * *

 

Mikasa has a deep laceration upon her thigh, but the cut hasn’t nicked her artery. The paramedics say that she’s lucky, and Mikasa agrees with them, calling Jean to her side with an outstretched hand that Jean eagerly accepts between both his sweaty palms; she explains dutifully how Marco had come back for her when she couldn’t walk.

“If he hadn’t gone back to see the _triceratops_ ,” she says. “Maybe— _well_.” The implication goes unspoken.

Jean scowls, but it’s playful. He spares a glance up and over his shoulder at Marco, who stands over them protectively with his arms folded across his chest and a dazed, satiated expression smeared across his muddy features. A man in an orange jacket tries to approach him with a wad of damp cotton to clean up his face, but Marco bats him away, his eyes not leaving Jean’s back once, almost as if looking upon something he has only just found again after having misplaced it for so long. There’s amazement in his quiet, yet presiding awe. Jean snorts.

“Don’t encourage him,” Jean jibes, turning back to Mikasa, unable to hide the wryness of his own, secretly-smug smirk, “Giving him excuses. He doesn’t need you fighting his corner.”

Mikasa smiles dryly, and her lips are a little wobbly – but it’s in the same manner that she would conceal from all eyes but Jean’s. She slips her slender fingers from Jean’s firm grasp, and flops back against the camp-bed, letting her head hit the canvas and her tangled hair fan out upon her make-shift pillow. She tips her head to the side to maintain Jean’s careful gaze.

“I’m glad you’re here, Jean,” she says.

 

* * *

 

It’s Marco fifth rebuttal of a paramedic that has Jean’s tether finally snap, and he orders Marco to take a seat on the foot of Mikasa’s cot, announcing with finality that he’s had enough of staring at Marco’s mangled face. Mikasa chuckles sardonically as Jean tries diligently to dab at the cuts along Marco’s forehead , made ever harder by Marco’s insistent attempts to grab Jean’s hand and press proud, playful kisses to the pads of his fingertips. Jean spouts more swearwords than he thinks he’s ever uttered in his entire life, slapping Marco away every time he tries to duck away from the attempts to clean him up, and scowling angrily at the picture of innocence that Marco plays upon indignantly.

After Marco is clean (with dorky-looking Band-Aids slathered across his forehead and jawline that Jean cannot help but snigger at), Jean succeeds in escaping long enough to fetch Connie and Sasha, helping Connie limp his way over, despite Sasha’s squawking insistence that he stays in bed, and there’s a lot of scooping hugs and relieved laughter that paints a warm smile on Mikasa’s thin lips, and hauls a wheeze of long-awaited relief from deep within Jean’s lungs.

Connie, of course, has to regale them all with the story of his great, near-death _pterodactyl_ battle once again, but Jean doesn’t mind so much, willingly allowing himself to be pulled against Marco’s chest and held close, Marco’s chin resting upon his shoulder as Connie boasts. Sasha says nothing about it, and if Connie notices, he decides that finishing his story is more important than calling out the way Marco gingerly wraps his arms around Jean’s waist; and it’s not until Krista appears and grapples everyone into another, thankful hug that the words: _I told you so_ are uttered.

 

* * *

 

Sunrise over the city of Miami is not something Jean marvels at regularly; he’s grown used to the way sunlight broadcasts orangely from the glass high-rises of downtown, and the way the air itself seems yellow in the streets. He knows intimately the way refractions of dawn light scatter through the gaps and holes in the curtains he needs to replace, and he’s bitterly aware of how the sun seems to highlight all the dirty scuff-marks upon his apartment walls that he needs to clean before his landlord revokes his deposit.

What Jean _does_ marvel at, however, is the way the orange and yellows overlay in strips across the bare back that lies next to him in his lumpy, creaky bed, an intimate foreplay of light and shadows that seems to move and breathe ornately with every low snore than rumbles from the chest of his bed-mate. Jean rolls onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow, and weaves his fingers through the mess of dark hair flopped down upon his spare pillow, scratching gently at the roots in concentric, soothing circles.

This is not something Jean needs to get used to – and hell, if it _was_ , he knows he never would be able to quite accept the way he can skitter his fingers so freely and lazily across the freckled back that dozes beside him – but instead it is something that feels quite, indefinitely _right_.

Marco stirs, rolling grumblingly onto his side, peering up at Jean through the open slit of one eye, unwilling to unbury himself from the protective cocoon of duvets and blankets. He mumbles something illegible – but happy – appreciative of the feeling of Jean’s fingers in his hair. Jean grins, laughing lightly when Marco hides himself face-down in the pillow once more, a sleepy, sated murmur muffled in the linen.

Florida agrees with Marco. He likes the climate; he likes the beaches; he likes how the sky scrapers seem blue at night, and orange in the day. (He doesn’t like SeaWorld, but Jean is neither surprised nor alarmed, and they’ve already attended more than one rally propositioning the closure of the park since Marco moved in.)

He likes working at the Miami Zoo, because they have tapirs, which remind him of home – all of his homes. He likes looking through all the photos Jean has saved on his laptop of the Park, because they let him remember peacefully and quietly, especially on the days that _InGen_ ’s public tribunal is broadcasted aggressively across every channel.

He likes the way Jean sneaks up behind him without saying a word, wraps an arm around his shoulders, and leans his head against his, sometimes with a kiss against his temple, sometimes without. He likes when Jean suggests they print out some of the photos of Marco’s herd, and stick them around the apartment, because it’s not like Jean’s landlord can get any _more_ angry at the state of the plasterwork.

He likes when he notices the bracelet still tied tightly around Jean’s thin wrist, even if it’s just out of the corner of his eye. He has yet to see Jean remove it – even in the shower.

He likes Jean’s bed, especially when Jean is _in_ it. (It goes without saying.)

Florida agrees with Marco. Marco agrees with Jean. Jean feels it in his chest, and in his gut, and it feels not primal – because that seems too aggressive a thing – but unquestionable. He’s still figuring out what _it_ is – because what he has with Marco is definitely something, instinctively – but it doesn’t matter so much if it’s liking or loving or more than that. It is what it is, and Jean is happy enough to see where the current takes them. It fits quite snugly into this empty space in his heart, and can neither be explained nor ignored, and Jean likes it that way.

 


End file.
